Rating: 
Summary: Pushing the reader into the worlds of trading and murder
Review: Trading Reality combines three of my lifes loves - commodity trading, computer reality, and a great murder mystery. Tautly written, and played out until the final page, the reader will find this work hard to put away. I look forward to Ridpath's next effort.
Rating: 
Summary: How I wrote Trading Reality
Review: Trading Reality is my second novel. Initially, it was hard to write. How could I follow up on the success of Free To Trade?My first response was to try to write Free To Trade again, changing the plot and characters slightly. But my German editor gave me some wise advice: write about something else that you are interested in. And so I decided to write about virtual reality. I worked for three years for a venture capital company called Apax Partners. We invested in a small virtual reality company called Virtuality. it was one of the world leaders in the field, and dominated the market for VR entertainment systems. It had a bright future. But it had very little cash. Apax gave it some, and then two years later, the company floated on the stock exchange, giving Apax a profit of ten times its original investment, and Virtuality much needed cash. The whole process had been very exciting, and fraught with risk. The company seemed to be constantly lurching from boom to bust. Personalities were important and the stakes were high. From this, Trading Reality was born. I am pleased with Trading Reality. I have learned something of the craft of writing since Free To Trade, and I think it shows. But I am very aware that there is much more to learn. A sad postscript is that in early 1997 Virtuality did in fact go bust. The VR market took too long to take off, some management mistakes were made, and, inevitably, there wasn't enough cash.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than Frey but that's not saying much...
Review: Trading Reality is OK. The story is about a Brit financial-type who takes over his murdered brother's start-up in Scotland's Silicon Glen. He is forced to deal with the conflict of honoring his brother's wishes and his own mercenary instincts. The bond trader turned entrepreneur reminded me of Po Bronson's last two novels merged into a who-dunn-it, but without the humor. Merging the bond trader and high-tech startup entrepreneur together and layering that on top of a mystery was too blatant a play at a info-novel for me. And it was too predictable. Finally, there were some quirky things about the story. No marital relationship of the story's characters past or present either worked-out or was working out. And the final love-interest did not appear to imply any commitment. Hmmm? This book is OK, but there are better things to read.
Rating: 
Summary: OK Info-novel Who-dunn-it
Review: Trading Reality is OK. The story is about a Brit financial-type who takes over his murdered brother's start-up in Scotland's Silicon Glen. He is forced to deal with the conflict of honoring his brother's wishes and his own mercenary instincts. The bond trader turned entrepreneur reminded me of Po Bronson's last two novels merged into a who-dunn-it, but without the humor. Merging the bond trader and high-tech startup entrepreneur together and layering that on top of a mystery was too blatant a play at a info-novel for me. And it was too predictable. Finally, there were some quirky things about the story. No marital relationship of the story's characters past or present either worked-out or was working out. And the final love-interest did not appear to imply any commitment. Hmmm? This book is OK, but there are better things to read.
Rating: 
Summary: It's OK, but a slight disappointment
Review: When I first read Michael Ridpath's "Free to Trade", I was thoroughly enthralled by the use of bond trading as background for a suspense story line. There have been few truly integrated financial mystery novels. (A couple others are "The Takeover" and "Nest of Vipers.") Due to what I considered an exceptional first novel, I was slightly disappointed by "Trading Reality." Ridpath's latest novel is more cyber-techno than financial; too bad when you consider Ridpath's background in the financial markets. Although he starts the novel in a bond trading room in London, it quickly moves into different territory, that of computer generated virtual reality. That said, this is a pretty good novel, with a fairly intricate and convoluted plot, including a few red herrings, a couple of nasty characters, and a predictable, yet satisfying, ending. I would have preferred if the protagonist developed a more creative financial bailout. Even so, the ending was reminiscent of the classical English sleuth gathering all of the principal characters into one room, making them squirm, and finally announcing the murderer. Frankly, this would probably make a great movie script. It could easily be placed in the USA. Throughout the book, I found myself substituting American locations (Wall Street for London; the coast of Maine for Scotland; Harvard for Oxford), and it still played well. How about it Hollywood!
Rating:
Summary: It's OK, but a slight disappointment
Review: When I first read Michael Ridpath's "Free to Trade", I was thoroughly enthralled by the use of bond trading as background for a suspense story line. There have been few truly integrated financial mystery novels. (A couple others are "The Takeover" and "Nest of Vipers.") Due to what I considered an exceptional first novel, I was slightly disappointed by "Trading Reality." Ridpath's latest novel is more cyber-techno than financial; too bad when you consider Ridpath's background in the financial markets. Although he starts the novel in a bond trading room in London, it quickly moves into different territory, that of computer generated virtual reality. That said, this is a pretty good novel, with a fairly intricate and convoluted plot, including a few red herrings, a couple of nasty characters, and a predictable, yet satisfying, ending. I would have preferred if the protagonist developed a more creative financial bailout. Even so, the ending was reminiscent of the classical English sleuth gathering all of the principal characters into one room, making them squirm, and finally announcing the murderer. Frankly, this would probably make a great movie script. It could easily be placed in the USA. Throughout the book, I found myself substituting American locations (Wall Street for London; the coast of Maine for Scotland; Harvard for Oxford), and it still played well. How about it Hollywood!
| 
