"Chicago real estate entrepreneur Mark B. Weiss has already established himself as the author of five highly acclaimed books on buying, selling, renovating, developing, flipping and maintaining real estate properties. Now, Weiss has ventured into the world of fiction with a stunningly good page turner. The I Can't Get Enough Club is loosely based on his personal experiences with the banking institutions that finance his projects and the characters that inhabit that milieu.
The all-too-real storyline takes readers inside a world of high finance, where nobility of character comes with a price tag, and greed and changing fortunes dictate the creation and dissolution of alliances. Along the way, the book's characters provide the uninitiated with a primer on real estate and banking practices, City Hall bureaucracy and the pulse of Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods.
I grew up in one of those ethnic Chicago neighborhoods with lifelong pal Mark B. Weiss. We took different paths. He immersed himself in the world of business. It is from this informed-insider perspective that he was able to pen this fictional tale. I immersed myself in the world of letters and continue working as a long-time reporter and feature writer at the Albuquerque Journal. It is from this perspective that I've honed something of an ability to detect the heart and truth of things.
The I Can't Get Enough Club is Mark B. Weiss to the core. It has heart, it has truth, and it is alive with the ironies, absurdities, oddities and hypocrisies of living and doing business in Chicago. These are the very things that drive Weiss, the businessman, crazy in real life; but these are also the very things that give Weiss, the observer of humanity and the author, an opportunity to showcase his distinct voice and wit."
--Rick Nathanson, feature writer at the Albuquerque Journal
"It was a pleasure to read a book that is right on the money about why this financial world is in such turmoil. The story kept my interest from start to finish. The characters gave me a personal insight how a long line of abuse and the dishonest quest for money and greed change ones integrity. This story should be required reading for the average citizen who wants answers to why I cant's refinance my home and what happened to the credit markets.
Every author covets timing of current events and this story has the catchy cast of characters and events to keep a readers interest. Let's hope Mr. Weiss, your story gets published and readers can be informed and enjoy a brilliant piece of storytelling."
--David Glassman, Comptroller Universal Steel
"The I Can't Get Enough Club is an ambitious and gutsy novel that takes a very straightforward and unnerving look at greed and corruption. This book is a well observed study of the business practices that take place in today's world and is impossible to put down. I loved the characters and the out of kilter would in which they live... Mark B. Weiss writes in a strikingly honest and straightforward manner. Bring on the sequel!"
--Marilyn Egel, MCSW
"In The I Can't Get Enough Club, Mark Weiss has not only made a challenging subject (banking and finance) understandable, he has also made it readable in an engrossing way that keeps the reader happily turning his pages. Weiss has crafted a work that is as informative as it is entertaining. And it is very entertaining."
--Dan Baldwin, Author and Editor
"The I Can't Get Enough Club is an entertaining as well as informative book. It takes the reader through the processes involved in bank management at the same time that it develops compelling characters. An interesting perspective on an industry that is easily corrupted by greed unfolds, with Chicago's diverse neighborhoods as a backdrop."
--Marisa Plumb, Editor and Graduate Student, Art Institute of Chicago
"Greed is greed and it doesn't much matter where it happens. The I Can't Get Enough Club is as relevant in London, Moscow or Sydney as in the Chicago that the action within it takes place. Further, it is especially relevant at this time of global credit squeeze and junk mortgage bonds. If you (like me) do not really understand how our current banking crisis has come about, after reading this book it will be clearer.
"But," I hear you say, "surely you are not going to tell me that all international bankers are corrupt and greedy, surely some of them are honest." Well maybe, but as the reader will discover as the engrossing story unravels, the bad and powerful get the bad and weak to do their dirty work and within their plots, the good and weak become ensnared leaving the good and powerful too few in number to have any effective impact. As the old adage goes, 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
The story features two anti-heroes. The first and present throughout the whole book is Fran Kontopolus. To be blunt, she is a nasty piece of work who only 'just' knows how to behave within the norms required to get along. But get along she does and makes a habit of doing it at everyone else's expense. The second, who appears about halfway is Sonny Vulich. He is Fran's mentor. But only because it serves his current purpose. He is an arch manipulator who can bide his time, waiting for the right moment to appear. But more than that, with prescience he plans his game. As time moves on his real nature becomes revealed as those whom he controls play the part he orchestrates and the weak get pushed aside until he is ready to make his play for endgame.
Ultimately the book questions the readers own moral compass. Most ordinary people like to consider themselves as their 'own man' aloof and immune from the corrupting effects of the seven deadly sins. But this story will cause you to question your own moral fabric as it becomes apparent that very few are safe when presented with the opportunity to profit.
Mark Weiss has crafted this tale from a mixture of personal experiences and the events with which we are all too familiar. The story is told in an 'easy to read' style where the more complex financial aspects are explained clearly and easily for the lay reader and are not allowed to interfere with the narrative. This is entertaining and events flow easily from one chapter to the next.
The biggest criticism I found was that like the protagonists, I wanted more. The book made me 'greedy' to know what happens next. So, Mr. Weiss, roll out a sequel so that we can find out how Mr. Vulich gets his kumupence!"
--David Sherwood, Businessman United Kingdom