The Marketmaker

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: Boredom pervades this book-- it's one long lecture. We get told the population of Sao Paolo - in first person! We get told how financial markets work. We get told the mechanics of kidnapping. We even get told what the hero is eating all the time.

All this telling is even worse when it comes to the story: to have any depth characters need to revealled through their actions, not the author's limited descriptions. Conversations are stilted. And lines like "Pushkin touches my soul" are anything but deep and meaningful.

The real mystery is how this boring guy:

1) attracts all the girls, 2) gets invited to be part of big deals without experience, because he observed something obvious, and 3)gets taken along (with gun) to take on the baddies

The ending is implausible. A suprise, yes, but not at all possible given the "bad guy's" actions throughout. (enough - don't want to reveal all)

As for the City, the idea that you can destroy a smart guy who would jump to a fierce competitor by saying bad things about him couldn't work.

Yes, fiction has to be bigger than life, but there needs to be a thread of plausibility, and it needs to be -- interesting!

Rating:
Summary: A first rate book: Ridpath's best yet
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It held my attention from start to finish. Easy to read, gripping and interesting.

Rating:
Summary: just going
Review: I was disappointed with this read. The plot stretched credibility just a little too far to be an enjoyable read (academic becomes trader, gets mugged, girlfriend gets kidnapped, solves puzzle, tries to bring down trading house, gets girl back, rejoins academia, lives happily ever after. OK the summary is a little exaggerated but you get the idea.

Rating:
Summary: Nothing like Free to Trade
Review: Ridpaths third novel is further evidence of a downward trend. The main character Nick is not someone who generates reader sympathy. What are we to make of him when he ditches his girlfriend in a critical scene mid way thro' the book? Or when he makes a play for his best friends wife? Nick is also naive in the extreme eg "What exactly is money laundering?". Nick is a drip who should have stayed in acedemia - why was he hired for his Russian expertise when no use of this is ever made by his bank? All the characters have faces which "redden" - even middle aged folk? Basic errors abound - Lord Kerton is about forty - then ten pages later he is near retirement age? The dialogue lacks conflict. The prose is laboured and pedantic. As someone else has mentioned - who can believe that a lone English guy can take on the Brazilian drug lords? Nice cover though.

Rating:
Summary: Highly derivative, simplistic and lacking in depth
Review: This book was an extreme disappointment. Clearly the author is trying to establish himself as the John Grisham of the banking community but in my opinion has drawn rather too heavily on a good writer's recipe. As in all Grisham novels we find a young professional, thrown in at the deep end at the beginning of his career, who then uncovers a huge conspiracy which he tries to unravel himself etc etc. Specifically, this book seems to me to be a translation of 'The Firm' into the banking world, with many parallels in the plot: a young idealist is seduced by the cheque book generosity of his glamorous and powerful new employers. He temporarily sells his soul to the Devil before the scales fall from his eyes and he takes up the struggle against crime and corruption with which his firm is riddled. More originality next time please, and more depth/detail. The backcloth of the banking community on which the story is based is far from convincing, and weak characterization almost entirely dependent on a couple of gratuitous 'family background' scenes which are supposed to flesh out the character's motivation. All in all, a very poor substitute for Grisham.

Rating:
Summary: A formula too far....
Review: This thriller is a little like a throw-back to the 1970s. The trouble is, the author's heart doesn't seem to be in it. Long lectures about financial matters, culled from financial journals, the internet or The Economist really don't make for a good novel, thriller or no. This story meanders slowly and predictably through a kidnap plot, adding a South American flavour, but none of this livens up a very tired idea. A disappointment.