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Weapons Deployed
Black and White Smoke follows a CFO who is trying desperately to navigate his company through a dangerous period after the founder disappears from active leadership. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I’ve always found power and leadership transitions, including CEO succession battles, to be riveting. Especially so when the eventual outcome is the least expected one. Several shows, including the Succession series and, perhaps oddly for a business fiction book, the intrigues behind the election of popes, including the incumbent, served as inspiration.
The novel treats boardrooms like battlefields. Was that a conscious decision from the start?
Indeed, that’s the crux of the protagonist, Jon’s plotline, where analogies to chess battles are often drawn. On the chessboard, having attacking momentum, ensuring the strategic placement of pieces on the right squares, and seeking material advantages are the keys to victory.
Similarly, in the boardroom, the weapons deployed are timing, the power of persuasion, novelty of ideas, and the ability to forge potent alliances, be they collaborative or nefarious in nature. In these settings, subtext and subtlety are key features of the verbal duels. That’s what I intended to showcase in the novel.
Which character surprised you the most while writing?
Paxton, who is one of the antagonists. Ordinarily, I’d have little time for a character like him- a boisterous blowhard. However, my admiration of his qualities and understanding of the motivation for his choices increased multi-fold as I developed his character arc.
What do you think today’s business leaders could take away from the novel?
The essentials for success at the top echelons of organizations, such as having outstanding communication skills, strategic vision, a nose for opportunity, bias for action, drive, resilience, and ruthlessness, are on full display among the book’s characters. The book also doesn’t shy away from highlighting the personal costs of scaling the totem pole. All said and done, a central message is that forging the right alliances and who you have in your corner make a difference.
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Threats are mounting against an innovative business intelligence firm. Its CFO, Jon Kiza, a behind-the-scenes operator, hasn’t been in the spotlight. But when the CEO vanishes, and a game-changing deal starts unraveling, he’s thrust into an unexpected race for the top job -where he faces Paxton Stump, the firm’s charismatic rainmaker. Guile and patient positioning are pitted against charm and flamboyant thrusts. It’s a duel between the chess-minded quant and the warrior poet.
While on a trip, Jon is put in the crosshairs of alluring forces he didn’t see coming. A smear campaign takes shape, and he realizes that far more dangerous threats lurk in the shadows. Cornered, he fights back. Meanwhile, Paxton bags a game-changing deal with a client prospect, but obstacles follow, and the goal posts keep shifting. Regardless, the bacon winner won’t be stopped.
Of the two, who will sway the board?
Set across multiple cities, Black and White Smoke is an international, fast-paced corporate thriller packed with boardroom intrigue, spiced with corporate espionage, and with characters diced by unchecked greed.
In this world, every tidbit of information is leverage. And every choice has consequences.
Black and White Smoke
Black and White Smoke opens with a regulatory fight that quickly proves to be more than a matter of policy. After a controversial rule change unsettles the business-intelligence sector, VASPI’s CFO, Jon Kiza, is pulled into a thicket of boardroom maneuvering, hostile investors, vanished executives, covert surveillance, and corporate sabotage. What begins as a fight over strategy and market position becomes a pressure-cooker contest over power, loyalty, and who gets to control the future of a company built on prediction.
I enjoyed how the novel treats corporate life not as background furniture but as the arena itself. The meetings, acquisitions, investor negotiations, and leadership feuds have real voltage because author Thomas V. Papa understands the language and psychology of the C-suite. Jon is especially compelling because he is not a swaggering action hero; he is a strategist, a numbers man, and a chess-minded survivor who wins through preparation, pattern recognition, and stubborn nerve. The pleasure of the book is watching him absorb insult after insult, gather his evidence, and then move with almost surgical patience.
The novel is dense in the best and occasionally most demanding sense. It asks the reader to care about credit ratings, data aggregators, goodwill, antitrust exposure, and corporate governance, and I found that specificity refreshing. The prose has a brisk energy, with dialogue that can feel like a knife fight conducted in business attire. What stayed with me most, though, was the way the story lets professional victory carry a private cost. Jon’s climb is satisfying, but the loneliness around him gives the triumph a bitter aftertaste.
The target audience is readers who like corporate thrillers, financial thrillers, business suspense, boardroom intrigue, and conspiracy thrillers with an executive edge. Readers of John Grisham’s legal dramas may enjoy the procedural tension here, though this book swaps courtrooms for boardrooms and legal briefs for acquisition decks. Black and White Smoke is a sharp and worldly corporate thriller where the balance sheet has fingerprints on it, and every handshake may conceal a blade.
Pages: 246 | ASIN: B0GXGQJRCJ
Black and White Smoke – C-Suite Woes: Subtlety Has Limits
Black and White Smoke, by Thomas V. Papa, is a corporate thriller with its feet planted firmly in boardrooms, investor meetings, private jets, cocktail bars, and the quiet corners where reputations are made or ruined. The book opens with a regulatory fight over credit rating agencies and quickly widens into a story about money, control, succession, and the people willing to bend or break the rules to get ahead. Its early mantra, “Evidence, evidence, evidence,” captures the world of the novel well: everyone claims to be guided by facts, but almost everyone is also chasing power.
At the center is Jon Kiza, VASPI’s CFO, who’s trying to steer the company through a dangerous period after founder Vlad Fabiano disappears from active leadership. Jon’s rival, Paxton Stump, is louder, flashier, and more naturally theatrical, while Tessy Hill has to hold the company together from the board chair’s seat. Around them, Abe Quinn and Krenith bring a more predatory energy to the story, turning what could’ve been a corporate succession drama into something closer to a chess match with surveillance, planted scandals, hostile media, and real physical danger.
What makes the book so engaging is how seriously it takes corporate life as a battlefield. Papa doesn’t treat finance, acquisitions, data, or board politics as background noise. They’re the machinery of the plot. The scenes work best when the characters are sparring across a table, testing each other’s weaknesses, or trying to read what isn’t being said. Jon is especially compelling because he isn’t a smooth superhero type. He’s smart, proud, bruised, and sometimes cornered, which makes his fight to survive feel personal as well as professional.
The writing has a brisk, slightly satirical edge, with plenty of sharp internal commentary and personality packed into the dialogue. Paxton’s bluster, Dreyfuss’s bluntness, Quinn’s menace, and Jon’s controlled irritation all give the book texture. The plot is busy, sometimes deliberately crowded, but that fits a story about a sector being reshaped by deregulation, ambition, and backroom pressure. The line “Subtlety has limits” feels like the book’s operating principle: polite corporate language keeps giving way to harder tactics.
Black and White Smoke is a smart and energetic corporate thriller about who gets to lead when a company is under siege. It blends boardroom maneuvering with espionage-style tension, while keeping its focus on character, loyalty, ego, and judgment under pressure. Readers who enjoy high-stakes business fiction, succession battles, and stories where the real weapons are information and leverage will find plenty to chew on here.
Pages: 244 | ASIN : B0GQ1X71NF
