The action kicks off when foreign exchange trader Bryan LeBlanc decides that there is no reason to settle for his big salary when he can make an even bigger score skimming money from his clients’ accounts. When the theft is discovered, his boss, Seo-yun Kim, has to track Bryan down but keep the case quiet so that the firm’s clients aren’t alarmed. So she and colleague Neal Nathanson, director of special collections, whose job typically involves 'tracking down investors who’d overreached, taken bad bets, had their margins called, and then skipped out,' head south to find LeBlanc and the $17 million he stole ... Blown is well-plotted, with Smith mixing up the allegiances of the various characters so it’s never quite clear where their loyalties lie. And he deftly sketches their back stories.

Smith’s growing collection of novels, most bearing one word titles, have been widely praised for their unpredictable, pop-culture-driven story lines and barbed black humor. True to form, his latest farcical escapade pokes fun at Wall Street in a tale about a financial whiz. Although his gig at a foreign exchange desk puts big bucks in both his clients’ pockets and his own, Bryan LeBlanc finds rubbing elbows with greedy bankers distasteful enough to bilk them of a cool $17-million, enough embezzled money to set himself free from the rat race and sail off on a private yacht to the Caribbean ... Smith turns in another compulsively readable blend of satire, crime fiction motifs, and the occasional quirky, violent interlude in a tale that will satisfy his current fans and attract new ones.

There’s plenty of entertaining relish for detail in this fast-paced crime novel about theft and skullduggery. But along the way you begin to realize that this is more than a whodunnit. Blown is also a narrative about moral values and their repudiation. Absconding with a large sum of money is just the book’s hook. It goes onto pose some elemental questions. For example, would an ordinary individual commit a murder if it meant he or she could enrich themselves — and never be caught? ... Blown is engrossing; this is a page turner in the best sense of the term. Mark Haskell Smith, who has written novels, non-fiction books, and screenplays and teaches at University of California, Riverside, has done an admirable job of creating a short mystery novel that is not only populated by a half-dozen memorable figures, but stands as a morality play. This funny ethical fable suggests that our own selves may be the greatest mystery of all.

Smith’s novels are an acquired taste but often leave readers wanting more. Here, he delivers a comic crime novel inspired by the criminal character of Wall Street and its modern-day robber barons. A prologue finds a main character stranded on the high seas, imprisoned by a stranger. Next, meet our 'bad guy.' Bryan LeBlanc is a trader on his company’s foreign exchange desk, and the former boy genius is embittered—not a Fight Club burn-the-world-down anarchist but more of a disaffected sort who’s convinced himself his theft is sticking it to the man. Those on the chase include Bryan’s boss, Seo-Yun Kim, a Korean-American savant with an eccentric personality and a blossoming sexual appetite; Neal Nathanson, the bank’s lovelorn internal investigator; and eventually Piet Room, the book's most interesting character, a dwarf ex-cop with the swagger and charm of Tyrion Lannister ... Smith works out the mechanics of his heist beautifully, including the inconvenience of hauling around millions in cash and the inevitability that someone dangerous is going to catch up to you eventually, while still throwing in the occasional graphic jolt to make sure you’re paying attention.

An embezzlement scheme goes horribly off the rails in this darkly amusing tale of white-collar crime and its inexpert perpetrators ... Smith elates details of Bryan’s financial legerdemain with the authority of an insider and masterfully laces the novel’s serious scenes with veins of humor, as when Bryan recounts the exhausting number of currencies he has laundered his ill-gotten gains through and thinks, 'Who knew being a criminal was so stressful?' He has a fine-tuned ear for witty repartee and a skill for embroiling even his most comically conceived characters in dramas that steer his plot through unpredictable twists and into unforeseeable outcomes. This is a surprising, memorable novel.