Beginner’s Greek
by James Collins
(Little, Brown)
In this unabashedly romantic début novel by a former business journalist, the hero and the heroine meet cute (on a plane), fall in love (while discussing Thomas Mann), and are immediately torn asunder (he loses her phone number). Cut to a few years later, when the hero’s philandering best friend introduces his latest conquest—guess who. This is the kind of madcap comedy in which a key plot point is delivered by a lightning bolt in the middle of a wedding and love founders on a girlfriend’s tendency to wear lipstick “one shade too fauvist.” Complicating matters, the hero has been targeted for destruction at his financial firm by a jealous boss and roped into a scheme to corner the market in cereal-box tops. The Wall Street scenes are etched with an insider’s glee, and nearly upstage the main action.
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