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The only safe dosh at the moment is that there will be a goldrush of writers hoping to do for the credit crunch what Dan Brown did for the Catholic church. And Clem Chambers has led the charge with THE ARMAGEDDON TRADE, an ambitious but flawed debut novel. Jim's an East End boy-turned-super trader. His uncanny ability to read and predict the money markets has made him and his company telephone numbers. But he doesn't like the way he sees the charts going. Enter, stage left, the enigmatic Max Davas who's got money to burn and a nose for trouble as finely attuned as Jim's. THE ARMAGEDDON TRADE is a cracking idea for a book, but sadly doesn't quite deliver. Its main problems are information dumps, coupled with too much tell – and heavy-duty tell at that – and not enough show. When the action finally explodes, it's all over much too quickly, and I'm still not totally sure I cottoned on to what was happening. Chambers clearly knows his stuff inside out, but readers aren't always so enamoured of loving details of every inch of a trader's life. One of the knacks of good writing is being able to drip-feed the reader the information they need without making them feel as if they need a degree in economics. The characters are also very thin. I liked Jim, the Cockney lad who's devoted to his gran, but the others were pretty much all caricatures. Davas feels as though he's wandered in from a James Bond film. The main snag with THE ARMAGEDDON TRADE is that it can't decide if it wants to be thriller or science fiction – and it tries both. The ending feels like it's ridden in from another book. But some parts suggest that Chambers could be worth persevering with – the scenes in the Venetian palace are rich and imaginative, and some of the trading floor patter shows that the writer's well at home in the setting.
Reviewed by Sharon Wheeler, May 2009
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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