The Informant: A True Story.

• Author: Ramares, Kellia
• Position: Brief Article

The Informant: A True Story by Kurt Eichenwald Broadway Books. 606 pages. $26.00.

Archer Daniels Midland Company, "supermarket to the world," was "price-fixer to the world" during the 1990s when this story of corporate and personal greed unfolded. ADM and several high-ranking executives, including the son of CEO Dwayne Andreas, were convicted of international price-fixing.

Eichenwald, an investigative reporter, chose the novel form to tell this story because "reality can serve as the handmaiden of fiction.... I was attempting to put readers in the same uncertain position as the investigators." Journalists and students of media may find the story of how Eichenwald wrote the book, outlined at the end, as interesting as the story of ADM's scandal.

The result is a long but engrossing police and psychological thriller about how a whistleblower drew ADM's...