A good thriller requires a premise
which catches the imagination of the reader by hooking some concern
or fear that actually affects the reader, either consciously or
unconsciously. It then includes characters who can be identified with
in some way that keep the reader engaged as the story develops and
maintains its narrative drive. Often the books are characterized by
having many short chapters, each ending with a cliff hanger event, or
anticipation of one, which drives the reader forward to the next one.
Prince
of Risk by Christopher Reich
(Doubleday, 2013, 386 pages, $25.95) achieves all these elements in a
financial/techno thriller that hits all the button, drives the reader
through to its exciting and satisfying conclusion, and strikes a note
of unintended cynicism for the wary reader about many values and
directions in our society. Prince
of Risk is certain to be a
best seller, appealing particularly to xenophobes and conspiracy
theorists, while coming at the reader with a vibrant force that keeps
the pages turning almost by themselves.
The
novel opens with the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, the
Secretary of the Treasury, and the President of the New York Stock
Exchange meeting together to discuss an urgent problem. At the urging
of the Edward Astor, the Stock Exchange chief, they request a late
night meeting with the President of the U.S. Heading to the White
House, they get through several security stops, but as they approach
the building, the car takes on a will of it's own and rolls toward
the portico, but is destroyed before it can do any damage, killing
all aboard, but allowing just sufficient time for Astor to text a
single word, “Palantir,” to his estranged son, the fabulously
successful hedge fund manager, Bobby Astor, whom we meet standing
atop the chimney of his Long Island mansion, about to leap into the
swimming pool to raise millions of dollars for charity. Shortly
after, Bobby Astor's ex-wife Alex Forza, an ambitious FBI agent on
the rise as well as a great beauty, informs him of his father's
death. The story then cuts to China, where we meet Magnus Lee, in
charge of Chinese investments in the financial and political world,
who seeks a place in the ruling committee which runs the world's
fastest growing and most completely managed society. Thus, all the
pieces are in place for a rip-roaring combination of thought
provoking plausibilities and plenty of violence with a smattering of
sterile sex. Describing more of the action would only take away from
the fun of reading this novel.
For
readers in this contemporary world, where there's a growing sense
that our privacy no longer exists, our freedom is being undermined
by forces too big for us to understand, and a government functionary
can abscond with a flash drive to release dangerous, and perhaps
damaging, information freely to the world and hostile foreign
governments, all this takes on a frightening and familiar tone people
living in the contemporary world can recognize and incorporate into
their world view. Add to that some artifacts of our own fantasy
worlds: beauty, success, wealth, Chinese secretive drive for world
domination, our own almost frantic competitive urge to not
communicate, and the risks of military and technological superiority,
coming together to create a rich readers' brew of story-telling.
While the characters tend to be stereotypes and the situations become
somewhat predictable, Reich skillfully throws in surprising plot
devices just as the reader thinks that all is figured out, keeping
Prince of Risk
an enjoyable journey into a
world that fascinates us all, and in whose dark complexity we
fervently wish we didn't, at least partially, believe.
Christopher Reich
Christopher
Reich writes about himself, “I was born November 12, 1961 in
Tokyo, Japan and moved to Los Angeles four years later, in late 1965.
I graduated from Harvard School (now Harvard-Westlake) in 1979, then
made the move to Washington DC where I attended the School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown University. Upon graduating with a degree in
international economics (a field in which I was neither particularly
gifted nor interested), I worked as a stock broker for two years. One
day my best client said, "Chris, you're a nice guy, but you have
no idea what you're doing in this business. You might get into
trouble one day. You gotta get your butt to business school." I
followed his advice and headed down to Austin, Tx, to earn an MBA at
UT. After graduating from UT, I moved even farther east....all the
way to Switzerland, where I joined the Union Bank of Switzerland,
first in Geneva and then in Zurich. I left banking and worked first
as a consultant, and then as the CEO of a small watch company in
Neuchatel. The only thing I missed out on was the chocolate business!
Anyway, after 7 years in Switzerland, I decided that it was high time
to become an author. I'd never written a short story and I hadn't
taken a single English class in college. So what? I was a demon
reader and I thought for sure I could do. My wonderful wife supported
the decision wholeheartedly and we moved back to Austin, where I
would write my first novel, Numbered Account.” He is the New
York Times bestselling author of Rules of Deception, Rules
of Vengeance, Rules of Betrayal, Numbered Account, The
Devil's Banker, and many others. His novel The Patriots Club
won the International Thriller Writers award for Best Novel in 2006.
He lives in Encinitas, California.
Christopher Reich's Prince
of Risk ((Doubleday, 2013,
386 pages, $25.95) appeals to people who like their thrills
professionally and slickly packaged into a first-rate story. I found
myself having to put my Kindle down every so often to allow myself to
release the tension and process the action. The book's reliance upon
technological paranoia and Chinese xenophobia will attract a number
of readers who would have it be factual, too. I received the book
from the publisher through Edelwiss
and read it on my Kindle as an electronic galley.
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