The Dinosaur Club

by William Heffernan

Book Overview

In a five-day span Jack Fallon learns that his wife of 24 years is dumping him and that the company he's worked for all his life is doing the same. Along with other coworkers in the 50/50 class 50... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 068814988X
• ISBN13: 9780688149888
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 303 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Enjoyed it

This is an enjoyable read with an interesting plot. The protaganist, Jack, and his co-workers get wind of a corporate plan to cut costs by "downsizing" all the people age 50+. They secretly organize to try to derail the plan. At the same time, Jack's wife leaves him for another man, and does some very brutal and downright mean things regarding the shared property. That's the beginning. The rest of the story is a page-turner . . . I couldn't wait to see what happened next. The ending regarding the corporate plan was a little far-fetched, but satisfying anyway. I would have liked to see Jack's ex-wife get her just rewards because I thought she got off a little easy. But all in all, this was a really pleasant and fun read, and a unique one, too.

Corporate intrigue and plotting too real for fiction

There is no easy way to resize a company and many execs take the easy way by combining the need with greed. The affected are helpless unless they reach into their guts to find determination, courage, craftyness and imagination. When Jack Fallon's life falls apart at both ends of his commute, he finds the craftyness and courage to confront his probelms with work and wife. Anyone ever confronted with either can relate to what happens as Fallon leads his co-workers and himself out of desperation but it ain't easy to fight executive and wifely greed at the same time. I've worked for thirteen companies at the executive level, in marketing and with legal staff and I can't believe Heffernan hasn't also - that's how real his stuff is as he touches all the bases of divorce, its impact on the kids, a new love, being over fifty in the workplace, shallow management, aging parents, product defects and insider manipulation. Can Fallon cope with all this? I read The Dinosaur Club in one saession to find out...and so will you.

Booklist Review of Morrow Hardcover: 6/1/97

Edgar award winner Heffernan created the Paul Devlin detective series and wrote the spy thriller Corsican Honor (1992). With his eleventh book, he turns to the world of business, constructing a revenge fantasy that will appeal to all who have ever felt their jobs to be in jeopardy. This workplace farce takes the shenanigans used by the three office secretaries in Nine to Five to a much higher level. Jack Fallon and several of his coworkers are "dinosaurs," members of the "50/50 class." They are over 50 and make more than $50,000 and are about to be downsized out of their jobs. Instead of accepting their pink slips, they fight back, and Heffernan's caricatured company executives make deserving targets. Moreover, his cinematic plot elements have already caught the attention of Warner Brothers, which has paid $1 million for movie rights. David Rouse Copyright© 1997, American Library Association. All rights reserved

Kirkus Review of the Morrow Hardcover: 4/15/97

A jocose but pointed fable from Heffernan (Corsican Honor, 1992, etc.) pits aging executives against impatient young guns whose corporate strategies don't put people first. Jack Fallon's wife Trisha suddenly walks out on him after 24 years of more or less blissful wedlock. Badly jolted but stubbornly on the job as VP at Manhattan-based Waters Cable, the 49-year-old suburbanite learns through the grapevine that Carter Bennett, the company's unscrupulous young CFO, may be eyeing him, his senior associates, and their sizable pay packages as candidates for the big business equivalent of extinction. Instead of going quietly, Jack and his fellow targets resist the layoffs with preemptive strikes launched through a so-called Dinosaur Club they've organized. While their low-intensity revolt disrupts Carter's master plan to force as many older workers as possible from the payroll before instituting a mass dismissal, he presses on with a campaign of attrition. His presumed accomplice in this effort is Samantha Moore, a comely thirtysomething attorney who's been detailed to provide for a downsizing that won't result in a storm of discrimination suits. Increasingly disturbed by the nature of her big-chance assignment, Samantha eventually joins forces with the insurgents. In the meantime, Jack is being led a merry chase by the spouse from whom he's separated. The Vietnam vet nonetheless finds time to keep top management at bay and fall in love with clever Samantha, who returns his affections. The mechanics of how he and his over-the-hill gang turn the tables on their would-be tormentors will afford considerable comfort to those who believe age, experience, and cunning can overcome youth and enthusiasm almost every time. An enormously entertaining yarn that puts the concept of human resources in an arresting new perspective. (Film rights to Warner Bros.) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

You won't be able to put it down!

Great read...just flows. You'll stay up all nite to finish this just to see what happens