Title: Catch A Falling Knife
Author: VJ DeFil
Publisher: TBA
ISBN: 978-1-7363270-0-5
Pages: 430
Genre: Financial Thriller
Reviewed by: Liz Konkel

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Valentina Vittorio arrives in Hong Kong with a purpose. She has spent the last few years raising in status with the stock traders and analysts until she finally landed the biggest job that anyone in the industry could imagine. JM Wen International’s team of world-class deal closers gives her more than a career opportunity. Valentina is put in a position close with the man responsible for her father’s death. To get justice, Valentina must dig deeper into JM Wen International where she uncovers the darker underbelly of greed and corruption which takes a deadly and dangerous turn when people working there are found dead. Soon she finds herself surrounded by enemies and she has to decide what all she’s willing to risk to bring JM Wen down, even if that means her life.

The prologue of Catch a Falling Knife by author VJ DeFil sets up Valentina’s own journey by showing the corruption before she even arrives in Hong Kong ten years later.  Valentina is a daring protagonist who is layered and has a complex agenda with her life dedicated to building a career that has the sole purpose of taking down the man who is responsible for her father’s death. She’s entirely driven by her need for justice and how far she’s willing to go to seek it. The story centers on the themes of corruption, darkness, and justice with each playing a direct part in the evolution of Valentina’s character and the evolution of the story. The further she digs into this world of greed and murder, the more the darkness of it starts to linger within her own actions. The darkness of the setting that author DeFil has created takes Valentina from an ordinary person to someone willing to kill or turn to someone even more dangerous than Wen.

Valentina spends the story caught between the blurred lines between allies and enemies, with more of the latter showing their own greed-driven desires. The course of the story takes several turns with Valentina even turning to a fellow worker named Yan who becomes more than an ally. Lucas starts off as someone who seems like an ally until it’s revealed that he’s the right hand to Wen and will put his conscience aside to do his bidding. DeFil weaves in little moments where you can see Lucas’ humanity is still present which creates a more human character. Valentina’s goal is to take down Wen who has corrupted everything around him from her father to Lucas and this corruption is seen in how the characters are slowly drawn into the dark he has created.

DeFil excels at showing the evolution of a normal person who is corrupted by a dangerous world through the use of an action movie formula. Valentina has a vulnerability about her which is seen through her nervousness when she first steps behind dangerous lines and through flashbacks about what led her to this point. The story is set entirely within the financial sphere of Hong Kong with gangsters, greed, and murder creating the tone of a thriller with intense action moments and the suspenseful takedown of Wen. The corruption you see throughout the story is shown in two ways: the corruption of a company and the corruption of good people. Both threads of corruption DeFil uses to create the bones of Catch a Falling Knife for a fast-paced, action-packed, and suspenseful story that is thrilling and addicting.