The Steel Connection

The Steel Connection is a business thriller aimed around the details of high finance and investment firms and placed in the high financial society of the people who work in that world. Willem Vandenwater is a partner in Tri-Mound, an investment firm he started with an old school friend and one of their professors. They quickly develop a stable of companies they’ve bought and making a good return for their investors by charging management fees and pushing for higher valuations to justify setting up a third fund. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s due to all the press that Mitt Romney received last year during the presidential election for his role with Bain Capital. The term for investment firms more interested in their return on investment than the health of the company they invested in is “vulture capitalism” and Willem’s partners are pushing that as much as they can.

Willem finds a quality problem at one of the companies he’s responsible for and a disturbing lack of interest in the problem from the management they installed at the firm. From there, Willem gets involved with the attractive CTO of the company, who is trying to find out why they are suddenly having those problems with one of the parts they sell. An attempted burglary of the CTO’s house and political maneuverings with Willem’s partners bring him to doubt everything he’d believed was stable in his life.

The Steel Connection is an interesting business thriller along the lines of Michael Crichton’s earlier works. As the story progresses, there is a fair amount of information about venture investing and investment firms. Amstel does a great job with the multitude of personalities of the wealthy populating the story, and those less fortunate who interact with them. Willem finds his eyes opened to the inequalities wealth has provided him and not others. It is this lens of socioeconomic analysis that provides an excellent story more depth beyond that of other thrillers. The Steel Connection can entertain and illuminate an audience already intrigued by private equity, hedge funds and other in-the-news investment stories.