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MWSA Review
Joseph Badal’s Payback is an action-packed thriller of revenge—often gory murders—and deep friendship. Badal’s characters come to life. Whether you love them or hate them, you can’t wait to find out what happens. Then, just when you think the story is over there’s another twist in the road, and a whole new adventure.
Bruno Pedace’s investment banking bosses attempt to frame him, but he gets out by the skin of his teeth, taking “insurance” with him. For the next eight years he sits on millions of dollars’ worth of documents, bonds, and cash, living on the fringes of society, afraid of his own shadow. Enter Janet Jenkins, an advocate at a women’s shelter, who saves him during a mugging. From that day their friendship begins and Pedace embarks on a metamorphosis, from victim to avenger.
Bruno contrives a very dangerous, intricate, technologically ambitious plan to destroy his former employers. As brave as he is, however, his timidity precludes him from telling Janet that he loves her. Janet is dragged into Bruno’s life of conspiracies, corruption, blackmail, kidnapping, and assassinations. Bruno ingratiates himself into Janet’s life at the shelter, ultimately helping countless women, with his grandiose philanthropic plan.
Payback is a story about revenge and dignity, and the courage we amass from each other.
Review by Sue Rushford (February 2023)
Author's Synopsis
When Bruno Pedace learns that his investment banking partners are setting him up to take the fall for their own corrupt practices, he does what he has always done—run away. But the documents he takes with him put a target on his back. He changes his name and, for nine years, goes underground, until an assassin tracks him down in California and badly injures him.
Befriended by Janet Jenkins, a courageous woman who works in a battered women’s shelter, Bruno, for the first time in his life, with Janet’s help, fights back. He constructs an ingenious financial scheme to get payback for the crimes perpetrated by his former partners.
In PAYBACK, award-winning, Amazon #1 best-selling author Joseph Badal weaves a story about a sympathetic protagonist who, when pushed too far, finally pushes back. This is a story about revenge that includes assassins, corrupt Wall Street investment bankers, a Mafia capo, Asian gangs, and heroic cops. And, to top it all off, it is a story about friendship and love.
Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review Genre: Fiction—Mystery/Thriller
Number of Pages: 310
Word Count: 79,337