Black Fridays

Nominated for the Edgar(R) Award for Best First Novel

One of Booklist's "Year's Best Crime Novels"

After two years in federal prison, Jason Stafford is no longer welcome on Wall Street. But due to his financial crime expertise, one firm wants him to quietly look for irregularities in the books of one of their junior traders, whose body was just pulled from the Long Island Sound.

Raising an autistic five-year-old alone, Stafford can't refuse the lucrative offer. The job is supposed to last two weeks, tops. But soon he's facing threats and intimidation, and more people are dying. Stafford must fight for his life--while struggling to save his son from a different kind of danger...


About the Author
Michael Sears was sixty-one when his first novel, Black Fridays, took the Shamus award and was short-listed for the Edgar and three other major awards.

After nine years as a professional actor, he got an MBA from Columbia University and spent more than twenty years on Wall Street, rising to become the managing director in the bond trade and underwriting divisions of Paine Webber and, later, Jefferies & Co., before heeding his father's advice: "When it stops being fun, get out." He did so in 2005, and returned to what had always given him the greatest joy--writing--studying at NYU and the New School.

He is married to the artist and poet, Barbara Segal. Together with the not-altogether-domesticated cat, Penelope, they live in Sea Cliff, NY, within sight of the towers of New York.