Very Bad Company

A delightful satire—fun, fast, and furious—of the high-flying tech industry. Every year adtech start-up Aurora brings together its top executives for a weekend retreat (think PowerPoint presentations and Jet Skis), this year, it’s in Miami Beach. It’s quite a cast of characters: for starters, the CEO models himself on Churchill. In the hands of other novelists, the cast could become a messy menagerie. But each character here is so well-defined, beginning with the company’s latest hire, Caitlin Levy, Head of Events (curious since Aurora has never sponsored an event). But just when the second day has started and everyone is beginning to sober up, there’s the announcement that the company has been sold, and suddenly everyone is if not very, very rich, then quite rich. It would be time to celebrate, except that one of the high-level executives has disappeared. And the entire retreat is under surveillance by the tech media, who can sniff a good story. Like Rosenblum’s first novel, Bad Summer People, this novel delights in exploring what lies under the surface. The adtech folks would call that a deep dive.