Nest of Vipers is now available as an ebook from various suppliers. |
High rollers in the City of London are there for one purpose only - to make
money. They can be clever, unscrupulous, corrupt and greedy, but without that
single, driving ambition they cannot survive, let alone succeed. Bad enough
for a man wanting to flourish in the nest of vipers; hell for a woman.
Sarah Jensen, one of the youngest and most highly paid foreign exchange
traders in the City, knows all about survival. Her strange and tragic
childhood has equipped her to deal with most situations; now her glamour
provides the perfect camouflage in the lethally competitive environment in
which she works.
When the Governor of the Bank of England and the Director of
Counter-Narcotics Crime at MI6 decide to investigate corruption in a leading
merchant bank, they identify Sarah as the ideal undercover agent, and they
send her in to find out what she can about what she is led to believe is a
case of insider trading. The trouble is that they don't reveal to her their
own secret agenda, and they have no idea that Sarah - when the killings begin
- is more than capable of taking fate - and the law into her own hands. |
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One of the top foreign exchange traders in the City, she's addicted to risk
as a way of blotting out the pain of a childhood tragedy. For Sarah the
assignment is impossible to resist. But as she gets close to the heart of a
deadly international conspiracy, she is soon playing for the very highest
stakes - her life. The action ranges from London to Rome, Frankfurt to
Morocco before reaching a deadly climax back in England.
Sarah Jensen is also the heroine of Something Wild, Linda Davies' fourth book. Nest of Vipers and Nick Leeson"The love of money is the root of all evil." The ease of transferring vast sums of money around the globe using computer networks provides tempting opportunities for corruption, as described in this novel by my sister, Linda Davies. Early in 1995 the scandal of the collapse of Barings Bank, caused by the rogue trader Nick Leeson, grabbed headlines all over the world. All scandals in the world of banking and finance provoke criticism of the regulators but it is often claimed in defence of the authorities that the actions of mavericks cannot be foreseen. This was disputed by Allan Fotheringham writing in the leading Canadian news and current affairs magazine Maclean's. According to Fotheringham:
Nest of Vipers, the Security Services and Insider TradingThe novel proved prophetic in another way, too. In it currency dealers in one bank make huge profits from advance inside information about discussions at meetings of central bankers and finance ministers of the G7 countries (the group of 7 leading industrialised countries - now the G8 since Russia was admitted). Since Nest of Vipers was published there have been a number of alleged cases involving central banks.
Mafia BanksIn the novel, the Mafia use a commercial bank as a vehicle to engage in trades which enable them to profit from the inside information they have about decisions of the central banks. It is widely known that following the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union criminals infiltrated the Russian banking system. However the Mafia have been able to penetrate banks in western countries, which supposedly have much better established regulatory systems to prevent such things from happening. In June 2000 it was revealed that the Mafia had used DMN Capital Investments in an attempt to manipulate the New York Stock Exchange. In October that same year Italian police foiled an attempt by the Mafia to transfer a trillion lire belong to the Sicilian regional government to other accounts using a computer system established with the help of corrupt officials in the bank. Nest of Vipers was published before these cases came to light. Other Links to Information about Nest of VipersThis excerpt from Nest of Vipers describing a feverish episode of currency speculation was read by Linda Davies at a conference in Amsterdam on European Monetary Union where she gave a speech on the Psychology of Risk, Speculation and Fraud. AvailabilityNest of Vipers is available as an ebook from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca for the Kindle reader and from Barnes & Noble for the Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo and most other readers. It is also available as a paperback from Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca and other suppliers. Foreign TranslationsDanish Dutch Finnish French Korean German
Hebrew Hungarian Italian Portuguese Russian Spanish Swedish
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