Snatch 2&20: A Satirical Romp through the Wall Street and Silicon Valley Swamps

By Luke E. Fellows

Would you sell your soul to a hedge fund titan for tens of millions in dirty cash?Giles Goodenough is a Wall Street research analyst, coasting through life on luck and privilege. In an open marriage to the lovely ex-stripper Cherry, he seems to have it made. But behind his air of curated nonchalance lurks a deep insecurity stemming from his mother's premature death and his father's cold arrogance.Peter Silver is the billionaire founder of hedge fund POS Capital, whose monuments to his ego hint at his sociopathic tendencies. Desperate to sate his greed, the latest target of his speculation is Zyxview, a company founded by Egon Crump, a neurotic and lecherous tech showman with a penchant for fur vests and narcotics.When Peter hires Giles as an "expert" on Zyxview-and orders him to get to know Egon "better than anyone"-he sets in motion a train of events that takes the reader on a farcical and uncomfortable ride through the inner workings of our broken financial system.Can Giles escape the fraud and fakery that surround him? Will he be able to avoid breaking securities law, or end up in jail? Will he successfully dodge Egon's advances while protecting Cherry from Peter's perversions? Will Peter tire of him and dispose of him? Will he and his father be able to come to terms with their identities? And will he find out what matters in life, before Egon and Peter bring everything crashing down around him-in a world where it seems, at first glance, that very little is for the best.Snatch 2&20 is a no-holds-barred lampoon on key components of today's America: the corruption of the financial elites and the system that enables them, the ludicrous hype surrounding technology companies and their founders, and the blatant hypocrisy of pretty much everyone. It is also, perhaps, one man's journey to find happiness.Riotously funny at times, dark and depressing at others, Luke Fellows' debut novel takes us inside hedge funds, tech conferences, Silicon Valley HQs, and the wasteful extravagance and greed that surrounds them. In doing so, he has created a satire that leaves the reader in no doubt that if it didn't ring so true, no one would believe it for a second. But instead, amid the blatant exaggerations, lies a poignant requiem for our materialistic and vain modern age.While none of the main protagonists in Snatch 2&20 is meant to represent any factual individual, they may well remind us tangentially of people we have seen in the news all too often. It should not only be of interest to the fans of the hit TV shows Billions and Silicon Valley, but to anyone who wants an insider's take on the rotten core of our delusional plutocracy, in this second Gilded Age.Luke Fellows is a forty-something recovering hedge fund manager. Born in London, and educated at St. Paul's School and Oxford University, he sacrificed his love of Classics for a Wall Street career, moving to New York City in 2000. After a sojourn at Harvard Business School, he made the leap to Silicon Valley, where, in 2008, he co-founded a technology-focused hedge fund, retiring as soon as his partners could practicably get rid of him. Despite his best efforts to escape the bubble, he still lives with his wife and three daughters near Palo Alto, CA. Snatch 2&20 is the first novel he is admitting to.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B087KYDPPY
• ISBN13: 9798639785795
• Release Date: April 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"