Every time the global markets for stocks, commodities or currencies flutter and dip, giving investors the jitters, Martin Baker’s debut novel, Meltdown (2008, Macmillan, London, 390 pages), gains more relevance.
Could the world’s financial markets short-circuit and melt everything in sight? Of course, they could, and Baker tells how. “The action takes place in the near future, and the financial backdrop is rooted in reality,” he said. The characters live, love, plot and ponder in situations that make hundreds of millions of dollars resemble pocket change.
Just as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code needled organized religion, Meltdown questions the dealings of financial gurus. Not only does Baker’s research rival Brown’s, but he writes better. Deftly, he conveys the details and excitement of big markets and their workings.
“He could feel the surge of excitement, the thrill of power shooting through his veins. Now he was really trading. He was the lightning conductor for all the rich, concentrated vitality of the market and he could direct it where he liked. He was harnessing all the might of the bank’s assets and he was about to muscle a gigantic global market his way. It was as through he could wrap up every floor, every screen, every trader in the world into one huge football and then volley it out into space….”
Craving change, the oddly named Samuel Spendlove, an academic star at Oxford, accepts an undercover assignment from media mogul William Barton. He must work with and spy on Khan, a notorious market manipulator at Ropner Bank in Paris. High-flying and savvy, Khan once thwarted Barton in business.
“Three minutes earlier, Samuel’s colleagues had been slumped back in their chairs reading the papers and toying with overpriced chicken salad sandwiches. The sporadic flickering of the Reuters and Bloomberg screens was really quite secondary to the serious business of filling their stomachs. Now those screens were strobing blue and red, assimilating huge amounts of new information, straining to report the multitude of buy and sell orders which were flooding the market by the second. Most of the dealers were standing up. They were all shouting.”
Quirks typical of the movers and shakers in international finance go on display.
“What counted was the cleanliness and crispness of your shirt, the alpine pungency of your deodorant, and your ability to convey the impression that, no matter how bad your halitosis, you had brushed your teeth that morning. And your hair and fingernails had better be immaculate too. Regulation cuts. No big hair for women, absolutely no facial hair for men. Samuel’s theory was that cleanliness was both an excuse and a justification. You could sell shares in a dodgy company to an unsuspecting investor and then you could look at yourself in the mirror, check the razor edge of the lily-white cuff and tell yourself it wasn’t a dirty business.”
As Spendlove probes for a newspaper story, his best potential source, Kaz Day, another trader, suddenly vanishes. Then all hell breaks loose in the markets.
“…what we are facing is simple. It is no more and no less than a crisis of confidence. People the world over are suddenly running from paper assets. They don’t trust bankers and brokers and the clever people who work in the financial markets any more. They don’t trust the promises of governments. And when they don’t trust us, the whole system will come tumbling down.”
Who did the killing? What manipulation took place? Will the world economy survive? Can Spendlove elude the police and stay alive long enough to find answers? Do money and power justify everything?
“The manuscript took more than a decade in the research and writing,” said Baker, a British newspaperman. “It went through 13 versions and passed through many hands….”
Asian readers may highlight some of the most notable passages:
“Have you been to Singapore? Asian values, whatever they are, all over the place. Damned boring.”
“In Hong Kong, the government had moved in to quell the protest marches in the financial district. There was a big picture of a soldier with red stars on his tunic sitting outside a tank in front of the Hong Kong stock exchange.”
Baker read law at Brasenose College, Oxford, and qualified as a solicitor before tackling journalism. He writes for the Daily Telegraph and the Independent on Sunday. For seven years, he worked as the International Herald Tribune’s personal-investment editor in Paris.
All the way to Meltdown’s last line, worries persist about who did right or wrong, who should be trusted or not and if capitalism builds prosperity or exploits millions (of people) for billions (of dollars). Market trading, fictional or real, raises such doubts.
“Khan made hundreds of millions by playing with bonds, currencies, effectively whole economies and the lives of the people who worked in them. And he liked to do it ‘off the book’ – he played God, but he didn’t even play by God’s rules.”
With murder, mystery, excitement and better-than-average sex scenes, Meltdown has the ingredients to become an enthralling motion picture. But no movie will surpass Baker’s book.
Approval rating: 72 per cent.
For more information: www.panmacmillan.com
(February 29, 2008)
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