Poison Pill

Poison Pill is a train wreck of a book which is advertised as a financial thriller. Unfortunately, it fails on both counts. It says almost nothing about the way Wall Street works when it comes to takeovers and the defense of the poison pill. And it’s not even remotely thrilling.

As to what passes for the plot, a Russian billionaire decides he wants to take over an important pharmaceutical company. He has a financial raider in his pocket, i.e. he can blackmail this man into doing whatever he wants. So he sets up a hostile takeover. But to give himself the best chance of success, he has one of this men introduce poison into the best-selling pills the company sells. Obviously, when people start to fall ill and die, this hits the share price and makes the company a more easy target.

Unfortunately, everything about this potentially interesting plot is ruined by hopeless contrivance and coincidence. So the CEO of the target company and the corporate raider were married. They have a teen son and, with the random choice of the world, the Russian’s daughter “accidentally” picks the one son, and gets pregnant by him. That sums up everything that’s wrong with this book.