In many respects, Tony Tedeschi’s new novel, “Unfinished Business,” is an outgrowth of his years working within the business world, as a writer of business proposals, business plans and two business books. It is also a reflection of his years traveling the world writing special sections for Audubon magazine, and articles for dozens of other magazines and newspapers spanning the U.S. from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times.
The novel’s subject matter is particularly topical, given the state in which the country and the world find themselves in the 21st Century. It deals with the manipulations of an unscrupulous CEO and the consequences of those actions, all of which are wrapped in a mystery that unfolds as the novel progresses. It is set in locations throughout the world, from New York to Central America, the Caribbean and Europe; all places where Tedeschi has traveled extensively.
The dramatic tension is driven by the CEO, who is involved in stock manipulation and other business decisions that are so ego-driven they have destructive effects on the global conglomerate he heads. All of this occurs at a time when a much greater percentage of the general public is aware of this sort of activity, given what is going on in the real world of business.
Some of the CEO’s decisions, excused as “it’s only business,” have terrible results, including the massacre in Honduras that opens the book.
The character who seeks revenge for that crime is a metaphor for all those who have been devastated by the actions of unscrupulous business people. Nonetheless, it is a unique detective story, involving a business sleuth who must unravel the mystery of what is going on at the company and how it has impacted people, sometimes in lethal ways.
Tedeschi is editor and publisher of Natural Traveler Magazine®, a limited run print quarterly he founded in 2019. “That December I opened a Word doc, and dropped in stories and photos that colleagues I’d met over the years had been sharing with me,” he says. “Suddenly, I had a 64-page version of my take on The Saturday Evening Post, where I had interned during my senior year in college.”
The holder of a B.A. in Journalism from New York University and M.A. in English Literature from Hofstra University, Tedeschi was greatly influenced by the cultural changes that were evolving around NYU’s urban campus in Lower Manhattan in the 1960s. “Bob Dylan was playing the coffee houses, Woody Allen was doing standup, the Beat Poets and Progressive Jazz musicians were all over Greenwich Village,” he says. “My coeditor and I at the NYU newspaper created a weekly insert to cover as much of that as we could and it made a lasting impression on me. When I graduated, I wanted to work for The Saturday Evening Post or The New Yorker. Alas I was 23, drafted by the Army but took a commission as an Air Force officer and, after four years training pilots for the Vietnam War, returned to New York with a wife and children and followed the dictates of family down divergent roads, all centered around a career as a writer.
In addition to his newspaper and magazine journalism, Tedeschi has written two business books, “Live Via Satellite,” about Comsat Corporation and the technology that launched the global communications revolution and “The Whitford Way,” about the nonstick coating company that has made the world run more smoothly. He spent years collaborating with his mentor, Donald Bain, the ghostwriter of more than 100 mystery novels and author of the “Murder, She Wrote,” mystery novels, spun off from the popular TV show. An accomplished photographer, Tedeschi’s photos have illustrated much of his journalistic work. He is also a musician and composer, having recently completed his first musical play, “Leaving Pleasantville,” about the 15-year period from 1955 to 1970, when Rock ‘n’ Roll changed the world of music.
Tedeschi lives in Glen Cove, New York, with his wife, Candy, one of the country’s preeminent gynecological nurse practitioners. They have three daughters and seven grandchildren.
Read more
Read less
