Free to Trade: A Novel of Suspense

Paul Murray, an apprentice bond trader at a London brokerage firm, is shocked by the killing of an inquisitive young female colleague and stumbles into a global web of financial fraud, intrigue, and murder when he investigates. A first novel. $150,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Ridpath's first novel is a junk bond of a financial thriller, flashy but insubstantial. Trouble comes to narrator Paul Murray, rising bond trader at a small London firm, when one of his colleagues drowns in the Thames. The cops think accident or suicide, but Paul thinks murder, having seen the dead woman's brutal ex-lover molest her just before her death. So Paul starts sleuthing, pursuing leads in London, Manhattan and Arizona and tying the killing into a grand fraud involving a top New York trading firm. At the center of the fraud lurks an icy villain whose manipulations get Paul fired and placed under suspicion of insider trading-and murder. The villain isn't the brutal ex-lover, though, whose main purpose here is to perform gratuitous acts of violence that stick out from the main story like pickles on pudding; instead, the villain is, despite Ridpath's efforts to confound, exactly whom most readers will suspect halfway into the tale-which also suffers from leaden dialogue and myriad coincidences. Ridpath paces matters briskly, conveys the cutthroat ambience of the markets and, along the way, provides a solid seminar in venture capitalism. But anyone interested more in good fiction than high finance will find this offering a bad bargain. 100,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; audio rights to HarperAudio; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

An absolute flop as a thriller, this first novel astounds as an exercise in slowly unfolding boredom. Paul Murray is a novice bond trader at a modest London firm who, apart from carrying fleeting memories of Olympic glory (a runner, he claimed a bronze in the 800 meters), inhabits the stereotypical world of an aspiring financial shark, albeit a shark with pretty tame appetites: In a book populated with severe ethical slackers and cash predators of every stripe, Paul comes off as the whitest of white knights. However, after Paul's colleague and potential inamorata, Debbie Chater, is fished--very dead--from the Thames, the model citizen's globe begins to spin a bit faster. On the trail of a baroque financial swindle that stretched from a phony company in the Dutch Antilles to a sumptuous Vegas casino, Debbie was obviously killed for what she knew. Paul decides that it's his duty to catch her murderer, and from scuzzy New York salesmen to deranged former boyfriends, he suffers from no lack of suspects. Unfortunately, Paul is at base a wuss. His clandestine investigation, when not in pursuit of big, bright red herrings, is just plain silly; sex scenes with this or that leggy business babe are particularly ridiculous. Once the evildoers start threatening to lop off fingers, Paul realizes that he might be out of his depth, but he presses on anyway, determined to solve the mystery and recover the money his firm has lost to the schemers. Ridpath has designs here on pirating some of Tom Wolfe's and John Grisham's corporate spoils, but he simply doesn't possess the talent. He knows the bond markets inside and out, but no amount of pedantry can compensate for slight characterization, clunky dialogue, and a total absence of suspense. Plunging a Boy Scout into an abyss of greed, deceit, and violence is nothing new, but it's rarely this embarrassing. (First printing of 100,000; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A tale of corporate intrigue, Ridpath's first novel is acceptable if not exceptional. Paul Murray is a young ex-Olympian working as a novice securities trader for a London firm. Suddenly, he finds himself investigating a colleague's death, a multi-million dollar investment fraud, and threats to his life and livelihood. The novel moves well, effectively communicating the addictive thrill of high finance, and the ending is compelling. But some of the writing is naive and trite. Briticisms, such as the overused whilst, will grate on American readers, and some of the book's dialog is stilted. However, an aggressive marketing campaign is promised, and public libraries may face demand for this title.
--Rebecca S. Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.