When a plane drops off the radar then crashes in the Alps, killing everybody onboard, many are left with more questions than answers.
Annabel Werner’s life is a mess. Once married to Matthew, an important employee of Swiss United, a powerful offshore bank with a number of shady customers, she first grieves the loss of her husband, who was one of the passengers who died in the crash. Then come the questions and, with them, more pain. It turns out that Matthew was traveling from London with a woman named Fatima Amir, a woman Annabel had never heard her husband mention before. In the immediate aftermath of the crash and revelation of a likely affair, Annabel sees her late husband’s infidelity with the mysterious hedge fund investor as a worst-case scenario. In reality, things are much worse.
Once connections between Fatima and an evil Syrian regime are revealed, then comes another twist: Matthew was her personal banker, which raises questions about him, as well as the involvement of his employer, Swiss United. Hoping to find answers, Annabel searches high and low, eventually coming across an encrypted laptop that she believes holds the secrets that died with Matthew in the Alps.
Meanwhile, Marina Tourneau, a well-known investigative journalist, is at a turning point in her life. After years of writing about power couples and government-types, she’s now set to marry Grant Ellis, a former Navy SEAL turned corporate banker whose father is gearing up for a presidential run. But just as she’s ready to walk away from her career, Marina is asked by her boss to take five minutes out of her vacation in Paris to secure a hard drive, and then smuggle it back home when she returns. After agreeing to what was supposed to be a simple, uneventful assignment, Marina quickly realizes there’s more to the story after discovering that her boss was killed shortly after handing out her orders.
As both Annabel and Marina investigate things from opposite ends, Cristina Alger weaves in multiple twists and turns, setting up a shocking conclusion. It’s clear early on that Swiss United is dirty, but it’s the other names that turn up that’ll catch readers off guard. . .
Making her thriller debut, Alger jumps feet-first into her new genre with a noteworthy story about greed, power, and the never-ending search for truth. While it’s being billed as a financial thriller, Alger does a fine job of making sure her plot can appeal to anyone. Even those who don’t know much about banking and the financial world can follow along without any issues, while those deep in the world of money and wealth should be able to pick up on a number of key points thrown in just for them.
A fascinating plot meets fine writing in Cristina Alger’s The Banker’s Wife, which should find its way onto plenty of reading lists this summer.
Book Details
Author: Cristina Alger
Pages: 352 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 0735218455
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Release Date: July 3, 2018
Book Spy Rating: 7.0/10
Praised as “one of today’s finest book reviewers” by New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds, Ryan Steck (“The Godfather of the thriller genre” — Ben Coes) has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.