Corporate greed, the raid of America's pension funds, and a good old fashioned murder plot make this book a page turner. Like the Cicada, an insect that emerges from the ground on a 17-year cycle, company executives driven by the need for power, also evolve through a cycle from being magnanimous to being corrupt.
Jack Barker, a retired Marine Captain, working in Washington D.C. as a computer systems specialist, stumbles onto a plot to assassinate Donna Carlyle, a feisty newspaper journalist. When Donna is found floating face down in the Hudson River with a knife in her chest, Jack Barker sets out to solve her murder. In the process, Jack exposes a group of 12 corporate CEO's who are systematically weakening the laws designed to protect pensions and chipping away at the controls put in place to protect shareholders from corporate greed and mismanagement of company funds.
With the help of some old friends and his new family, Jack sets out to avenge the death of Donna Carlyle and expose the corruption and greed of the "Corporate Cicada."