Bad Connection

Michael Ledwidge writes thrillers that are a combination of three types of stories: tough guy novels, literary novels, and morality tales. "Bad Connection" is a prime example of his particular talent for doing this. It's a story about a rich man and a poor man, both of them basically good people, but both overcome by greed. Neither of them is the violent type, but when the two of them collide as the poor man goes after what the rich one has, they both lose control of the situation. Hard men become involved and terrible trouble descends on everyone. Ledwidge is brief with character development, but this seems to be not because he is unskilled, but because he gives the reader a great deal of credit for imagination. Ledwidge lays out the cornerstones of character, deftly lays on the bricks of the plot, and allows the reader to race around the pages, wanting to know if the whole thing will collapse on someone. The plot is fast moving, the dialogue sounds real, and the climax is not what you would expect it to be. What more could you ask of a thriller?

Bad Connection by Michael Ledwidge is a crime fiction not to be missed. A real compelling page turner.I love reading anything that sounds true-to-life and Bad Connection is exactly that.A thrilling story about a telephone repairman that accidentally overhears a business conversation that helps him make a killing in the stock market.Trouble soon follows after overhearing a follow-up conversation involving the world of finance.Some of my favorite books of fiction are that of the powerful and rich. Bad Connection is everything a wonderful mystery should be!

As a mystery writer with my debut novel in its initial release, I enjoy crime fiction that takes unusual twists and turns. Michael Ledwidge's BAD CONNECTION is one such book. Sean Macklin is a Manhattan telephone repairman with a disabled wife and a genuine need for money. While working a telephone line, he overhears a business conversation, and Sean uses his accidentally acquired insider information to make a killing in the stock market. Realizing that he's stumbled onto an easy way to gather the money he and his wife need for a move to the South, he continues eavesdropping on movers and shakers in the world of finance. Seans plans grow complicated when he overhears a most sinister conversation. He attempts to turn that information over to his brother, a cop. Sean's brother has other plans for the info, and the plot begins to take unexpected twists and turns. BAD CONNECTION becomes a morality tale on greed. It is an excellent book, and I recommend it highly.

Like the twisted, snaking and sometimes broken telephone lines Ledwidge deftly describes, Bad Connection is an intricate, interconnected and yet unpredictable thriller. Sean Macklin is a Manhattan telephone repairman who begins, innocently at first, listening in on conversations that are ripe with insider-trading information. It's the great telephone worker details and settings that make this book so compelling. We've got underground warrens of cable below manhole covers, long-forgotten dungeons of telephone technology and cell-phones as part of the plot. Isn't it great to read a well-crafted and tight thriller that also describes a world we all know must be just behind the "danger, no entrance" sign but we've never actually seen? Cops, secret agents, Medical Examiners and the like most often the subjects of thrillers. But because they are always on TV and in movies, we know something about them and so as thriller fodder they sometimes fall flat. Not with telephone repairmen, Ledwidge has crafted a wonderful fast-paced tale from their unknown world.

If you like gritty, noirish fiction -- as I do -- then you've gotta read BAD CONNECTION. Set, literally, in the underbelly of New York, its hero is an everyman who seizes an opportunity that he lives to regret. This book made me think about how private telephone conversations are actually very vulnerable; in this high tech age, personal privacy is becoming a very tenuous thing. I enjoy the works of writers like Ed McBain and Jim Thompson, and Ledwidge is definitely writing in that style. An excellent read.