Any book that has lesbian central bankers, call-girl blackmailing of the Chairman of the Fed, Swiss management consultants engaged in kinky sex, insider trading and murder is bound to entertain. In fact, what more could you want?
Except maybe a strait-laced, touched-by-sadness investigator and a beautiful and recently fired broker. And hey, you get those as well.
Kilduff's plot revolves around Alpha Beta Capital, a hedge fund that has drastically over-stretched itself, precipitating a global crisis.
The trader behind the crisis, strung out on a coke habit that would kill a horse, kills himself leaving his employer with nothing and, unbeknownst to himself, destroying the prospective retirements of the world's leading central bankers.
The heroine, Lauren Trent, the future sales person who executed the dead trader's call, is fired - ostensibly because she was doing a little insider trading to fund her lavish apartment in Hong Kong but mainly because the company, Mitchels, needs someone to blame.
The hero, Jonathon Maynard, is a widower fired from his job (at Mitchels, for refusing to bend on a point of principle).
He ends up working for the consultancy Richemont et Cie, run by the urbane but amoral and corrupt Olivier Richemont.
Maynard is rehired by Mitchels to investigate how their checks and balances broke down, leaving them as one of the can-carriers for the Alpha Beta collapse.
In Hong Kong he meets Lauren Trent, and as the plot thickens so does their relationship.
Unbeknownst to anybody but themselves, the chairman of the Fed and the governor of the Bank of England have lost everything in the Alpha Beta Collapse and are desperately scratching around for a way to recoup their losses as the Yank is being blackmailed by a call-girl and the Briton is facing a costly divorce for having an affair with his, inevitably, gorgeous assistant.
The duo concoct a plan whereby all the main central banks in the world will combine to invest in the moribund markets to spark them back into life.
On the side, the pair, along with also-stung Richemont, will run an investment operation riding on the insider knowledge they possess to recoup their money.
To run this black operation Maynard and Trent are chosen and, of course, discover the dirty dealing.
With a mixture of cunning, bravery and judicious use of the internet, they thwart the crooked bankers and save the day.
What makes The Frontrunner such an enjoyable read is the fact that Kilduff is an insider, so his descriptions and scenarios are convincing.
His dealing room characters come across as authentic and the plot zips along. Thankfully he eschews any heavy-handed sex scenes and his jargon is kept to the minimum.
Frontrunner is his third novel and should go a long way to establish him in the financial thriller genre.
comidheach@irish-times.ie1
