“Set in the heart of the traders world in London it has everything in it from money laundering to cold blooded murder.“
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Is there a ‘right time’ to release a novel? James thinks there may well be a right time. His first three novels didn’t do at all well, and Billionaire was his third. I’ve been looking for it for it for some time now but he has only just agreed to re-release it, and I’m please he his has done so. But why was 1983 the wrong time for it?
Billionaire is the story of greedy bankers and investors who come together to fix the gold price and make a killing. The plan involves a small Arab nation on the Persian Gulf to implicate Israel in the blocking of the Gulf by use of nuclear mines. Along the way there’s a trader in one investment house who becomes a treat for a Mossad agent working in London. The agent has two reasons for killing the trader, one is that his boss has ordered the killing, second, the trader has stolen the agent’s girlfriend. See, money and sex.
In 1983 though, the UK had it’s mind elsewhere, in the South Atlantic. 1982 we had fought and small war in the Falkland Island, and won it too. A year later and our minds were still fully occupied with mourning the loss of 255 and three civilian deaths and the 777 injured servicemen. At the same time the British public only had a vague idea greedy bankers, while Arabia was where most of the world’s oil came from.
Today, things have moved on a good way; now we know how greedy bankers really are after the crash in 2007/8. We are all too aware of the Arab nations today, and even more so of their Islamic religion. Today may well be the right time to re-release it.
Was Billionaire worth waiting and looking for? Oh yes my friends, very much so, another 4* read for me. It’s not in same genre as the Roy Grace novels of course, but just as good and interesting. I certainly enjoyed reading it. It is available now, I saw a copy in WH Smiths yesterday so it should be easy enough to get hold of. Considering it’s James’ third novel, he did well with it; so now is the time for him to push it hard.
Reviewed by:
Ron Clark
Added 22nd November 2016
