I wavered on the star choice for The Vault. On one hand, Brian Harrison has given readers a really strong character driven novel, on the other hand, there are only two characters interacting for the majority of the book. The wonderfully complex and layered billionaire is a tortured soul with family drama. The journalist he chooses to interview him before he dies, has her own personal dramas to contend with as well as some ulterior motives. I really appreciated that Mr Harrison went to great lengths to create "background" for our billionaire, including Twitter for him and his company, Facebook, LinkeIn profile, emails, text messages and print and electronic articles.
What caused me to waver was that the plot seemed unbalanced to me, I kept waiting for twists and surprises, based on the synopsis, and they just weren't happening. The solutions to the "mysteries" of our billionaire's family life/death and the contents of his (im)famous vault weren't strong enough. The book is entertaining, it held my interest, I couldn't stop and start at will, and I definitely wanted to read to the end, so I went with 4 stars.

Sam is probably the richest man in the world, but he’s dying and won’t talk to the one person who could probably save his life. But he does ask a writer to his home where he shares his life story and philosophy on just about everything under the sun (past, present, and future). The author really tries to do too much in a single book. Photographs, screen captures of text messages, newspaper articles, and lots of quotes are used which are very creative, and show tremendous research. I feel the concept would have been better served had the author saved some of his research for sequels using the characters introduced in this novel.