Treatment (Paperback)

Up-and-coming advertising executive Richard Park takes a business trip during the 2008-2009 economic recession. What should be a short lark in another state to mix business with pleasure turns into a nightmare that upends his stable life. While in California, a routine traffic stop stalls him, turning out to be anything but routine. When Richard finds himself at the end of his rope, he will be forced to take justice into his own hands. This fast-paced novel of greed, politics, and corruption by Ralph H. Perkins, starts from the climactic ending and works backwards through flashbacks to reveal the sordid problems of his life. Eventually, readers begin to feel compassion and empathy for the chain of corrupt events and ruthless free market tactics that have made his life so difficult. As an upper-middle-class member hit hard by government regulation, Richard seems to embody the tens of thousands of professionals knocked down by the recession. He hugs his young son and daughter as he readies himself for a California business trip, and he reassures his wife that his company will not lay him off. Vigorous and cocky, he is high-level advertising personified. Yet in this audacious thriller of underperforming capitalism and overzealous government, he will become the victim of a conspiracy built on robbing the livelihoods of hard-working Americans. Treatment is set against a backdrop of California during the recession, a state driven bankrupt by its pressing financial needs. There, legislators have begun increasing taxes and fees while scaling back loopholes and tax credit schemes. Most damningly, they have encouraged law enforcement to become an arm of revenue, issuing tickets and citations with regard to the bottom line, not the needs of justice. A smart, sexy, thriller, the novel draws on Perkins' extensive experience in the world of advertising and national-level auto sales. Treatment is a fictional story that shows just how quick and fast careers and families were sunk in the tar pits of the Great Recession. Written in the minimal, fast-paced style of a movie script, the book appeals to the American bloodlust for watching vaunted heroes rise to prominence and then fall from grace in a tragic collapse. Filled with sex and commerce, cutthroat advertising and back room political deals, Treatment sings the song of a nation mired in its own economic collapse.