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One of the current weapons in the war against terror is ... accounting. Follow the money. It's better than blood, though sometimes it's the same thing. Remember that Al Capone was ultimately done in by an accountant. It is money, not love, that makes the world go around. Love merely follows the money. Money is sexy, but only at the bottom line. The ledgers, the debits and the credits conjure images of desks, eyeshades and high intensity lamps.
Christopher Reich has been writing high-finance suspense novels for a few years now, getting his ever-growing readership accustomed to the idea that sitting and tracing money from Point A to Point B or moving great electronic tankers full of it across the world in a nanosecond can actually be exciting. However, nothing that has come before will prepare you for Reich's latest thriller, THE DEVIL'S BANKER.
Reich takes the classic good guy vs. bad guy plotline, updates it to reflect contemporary terrorism concerns, and lets things fly --- and fly they do, from the first page right up to the last sentence. In the red, white and blue corner is Adam Chapel, who walked away from a Big 8 partnership and six-figure income to, in his mind, make a difference serving the United States Intelligence community as a forensic accountant. Chapel is assigned to Blood Money, an elite counterterrorist task force assigned to thwart what appears to be a planned terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The man planning the attack is the mysterious Marc Gabriel, a shadowy investor and man of many identities who is the catalyst behind the terrible and dangerous act that is about to be unleashed.
When four of Chapel's colleagues are killed in an explosion, Chapel teams up with Sarah Churchill, an enigmatic British agent with a mysterious agenda of her own. Chapel follows Gabriel as he moves vast sums of money from bank to bank, knowing that Gabriel is planning something. Gabriel is an elusive, wily and worthy adversary, capable of improvising wildly when things go wrong and effectively counterattacking. Chapel and Gabriel perform a deadly dance across cyberspace as Chapel attempts to trace Gabriel's movements and divine his motives. But Gabriel is not acting alone; he has a small yet elusive network assisting him, a network that leads closer to Chapel's team than Chapel could ever reasonably imagine. Before THE DEVIL'S BANKER is over, Chapel and those around him will be irrevocably and brutally changed.
THE DEVIL'S BANKER is a tale that is impossible to put down, with plausible characterization, intricate but well-explained plot threads, and two equally suspenseful endings. Reich's ability to explain the complicated and unfamiliar remains first-rate. With its characters racing each other as well as the clock to a winner-take-all destination, THE DEVIL'S BANKER may well supplant THE DAY OF THE JACKAL as the penultimate popular spy thriller.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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