Top Producer: A Novel by Norb Vonnegut
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Norb is light years away in mindset from family member Kurt Vonnegut, of who I know too much. ‘Top Producer’ is a top producer of detailed, yet understandable, words of how Wall Street works. To tie such a complex subject in with an involved case of murcer is more than admirable.

However, this book is struck by what I find in the bulk of contemporary novels: Massive excess. For me a quarter of this book could be cut loose and work so much better. Vonneguts asides of bicycling and food and over focus of a victim is, at times, ridiculous. Asides should be a paragraph or two. Not pages and pages.

With all of the excess a reader will learn far more than needed of each character. A better writer could have scaled the character development down to far, far fewer words. The settings are very well depicted. Excess here may have helped a bit.

Still this is a very good book with a rather simple mystery that is decked out in Wall street trimmings.

Bottom line: I recommend this book. 7 out of ten points.

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