The Middleman

By: Mike Papantonio

Narrated by: Jim Meskimen

The Middleman is an epic drama of whistleblowers, murder, thrills, and legal combat—torn out of today’s headlines.

Nicholas “Deke” Deketomis and his law firm take on America’s Big Pharma when Deke’s college pal, Matt Redmond, presents him with a case of possible fraud involving EirePharma, the Redmond family business and a powerful Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM). PBMs serve as the “middlemen” between drug manufacturers and insurance companies, working in cryptic ways to determine not only the cost of drugs but also placing them on insurers’ preferred formularies. EirePharma was recently taken over by the charismatic CEO, Connor Devlin, who has a Rasputin-like influence over Matt’s cousin, Amy, the company’s current president. Devlin may be utilizing racketeering practices—and perhaps murder—to raise the prices of insulin and other drugs for his own profit and to the detriment of consumers.

Amy, who at first was in love with Devlin, decides—at great peril—to become her company’s whistleblower and provide evidence to Deke and his team. When key witnesses and even Redmond family members meet mysterious and violent deaths, Amy finds herself a pawn caught in the center of a frightening and deadly game of wills between a formidable gangster, who in the eyes of the public is a respected businessman, and a law firm that is determined to investigate and uncover the Middleman’s crimes.

In the tradition of Suspicious Activity and Inhuman Trafficking, Mike Papantonio takes Deke and his cohorts on a new and different kind of legal gamble in The Middleman, which is chock full of the action and thrills for which he is known.

©2025 Mike Papantonio (P)2025 Blackstone Publishing

the book did not seem to be written by the original author of the series

Where was the court room drama and the investigations....nothing special in this story. Very disappointing

Great read (listen)!

Love the twists and turns that I didn't see coming. Legal thrillers are some of my favorites and this didn't disappoint

Good story!

Enjoyed this book. It was a quick story which I enjoyed, too. Loved all of his previous books as well. I also loved the narrator, Jim Meskimen.

Very well thought out.

The book explained scenarios in detail and put you in the mind frame of a seasoned lawyer. It was an enjoyable listen.

This one was bad, difficult to finish

I've been a fan of the series so far (except constantly changing narrators, most weren't good). This book however was pretty bad. As a reader/listener it's annoying when the the author creates characters who constantly make stupid and unrealistic decisions just to manufacture challenges that wouldn't exist. Several of these could have been fixed with a quick phone call and yet some the character decides to do something completely stupid instead. This has happened in previous books in this series but not to this extent. Amy's character is so naive, irresponsible, and just plain clueless that I kept hoping she'd be killed off just so I wouldn't have to keep putting up with the situations she placed herself in. Without giving spoilers, it's also unbelievable that one minor character in the book is shot to death while a major character who was with them at the time is just severely beaten and left alive when the intent was to kill them both. There were a half dozen glaring eye-rolling plot holes in this story that made it difficult to finish. If there's anything good that came out of this book is they finally decided to keep a narrator that's not awful. For audio books the quality of the narrator is just as important as the story and you lose continuity when you bring someone new in with each book, even worse if they're bad at it.