I read Michael Ridpath’s first book, Free to Trade, when it came out in 1996. It coincided with the beginning of my career in financial services, and it was unspoken required reading. It painted an exciting, if superficial, picture of what it was like to be on the trading floor of one of the bulge bracket firms.

This one, The Marketmaker, was his third book and set in the world of Emerging Markets. The MC was a Russian scholar who found himself needing money and employed at the premier EM Fixed Income brokerage in the City, specialising in Latin American bonds, but aiming to expand into Eastern Europe.

I had it on my shelves for since it was published in 1999, and it was interesting to read about the markets then. It was before the term BRIC was even invented; before the LTCM failure; and just after the Asian financial crisis. Those were the days when the words banker and excess were synonymous, before all the scandals that eventually brought about Sarbanes-Oxley. It was also interesting to remember that the bulge bracket was bigger then, and there were more players on the street.

Our MC started all starry-eyed at the broker. There was a charismatic owner / mentor; a dodgy enforcer type with hints of mafia links; a best friend who had to make a choice between friendship and own gains; a beautiful, smart heroine who the MC fell in love with; even a cockney, pudgy East End boy. He was in turns fascinated by the City and angsty that he’d sold his soul. Then he discovered by accident something suspicious, and a series of seemingly unrelated circumstances only heightened his suspicion. He and his colleague-new lover were kidnapped, and he managed to escape himself but leaving our heroine in the clutches of evil kidnappers. In keeping with the “financial thriller” theme that the writer is known for, there were thinly disguised i-banks to give the feel of authenticity and much technical name dropping. I couldn’t help wondering if Bloomfield Weiss was Goldman Sachs and there’s no prize for guessing who the large Dutch bank KBN was named after.

The first half had some exciting trading scenarios and a touching philanthropic initiative. The beginnings of the romance was always hovering as a possibility. Unfortunately the financial backdrop faded to exactly that, a convenient background. The kidnap was a little too drawn out, and the solution to the story a tad too incredible. I was sympathetic towards our MC at first, but the Like (fb term) didn’t stay. I felt the writer was checking off cliché after cliché, the characters and story was pretty formulaic. Towards the end it read like an airport thriller and while there is nothing wrong with that (airport thrillers tend to be best sellers), the twists and resolution were pedestrian and I couldn’t wait to get to the last page.