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THE LAST TRADE
by James Conway
Dutton, June 2012
416 pages
$26.95
ISBN: 0525952829


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

THE LAST TRADE is a book inspired by the financial crises of the last few years. Author James Conway, who has a background in hedge fund trading, lays out a plausible scenario of what might occur if someone with enough power and influence decides to go rogue and threaten the whole world's financial security. That person is Rick Salvado, the head of a fund he has named The Rising, tapping into both a post-9/11 desire for renewal and the Bruce Springsteen connection.

Salvado's success is largely due to the genius of Drew Havens, a numbers person or "quant." But Havens becomes aware of a murderous plan that he can see is linked to Salvado and The Rising. Traders are being murdered all over the globe, and Havens' own young colleague is amongst them when he discovers what he was not meant to know. Also on the case is Cara Sobieski, an agent with the TFI—Terrorism and Financial Intelligence task force. She is based in Hong Kong, and is called in to consult on the murder of a broker there. She has her own personal demons, which lead her to make some very bad decisions as she tries to understand what is happening in the stock market and who is behind the string of murders.

The basic idea of someone with vast knowledge and influence figuring out how to game the entire world has potential. However, the characters in this book are not fully realized. Salvado is not fleshed out as a character or a villain, so that even though we are told background information about what might be motivating him, it is hard to have any real sense of him. The same is true for the other main characters, Havens and Sobieski. We are told who they are, but they never come to life. The other weakness of this book is that the author fails to increase the suspense. We are getting closer to the day when something big is supposed to happen, but the events leading up to it do not escalate. Rather, there is a repeated pattern of killings. Each occurs in a different city, but with only one exception, the outcome is the same. Having two chapters of confrontation and violence that mimic each other in format if not in the exact scenario or in the characters involved also dilutes the climax at the book's end.

This is the first novel by Conway, and it is clear that it suffers from the ills that are often found in an initial attempt. He has a workable idea, but does not create the story arc that might have made this a suspenseful thriller. He does not fully realize his characters, and perhaps has so many that he cannot focus. After trying for over 400 pages to understand the inner workings of the stock market and how one organization could bring it down, the reader in the end is left with a sense of flatness, of vague confusion and disappointment. The villains are not exactly who you thought they were, but it does not really matter.

Anne Corey is a writer, poet, teacher and botanical artist in New York's Hudson Valley.

Reviewed by Anne Corey, June 2012

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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