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You understand finance. You really do. It's a little more than the influx (seemingly limited) and outflow (seemingly continuous) into and out of your wallet and bank account, but not much more. Really. Here is what finance boils down to. Look outside at a birdfeeder. What do you see? You see birds of all sorts pecking away at the food and at each other. The birds are the brokers, the high rollers, and the day traders. Two of them won't share the same perch. There's probably food around elsewhere, but a full or even half-full bird feeder is easy pickings. The more aggressive birds will try to chase the others away. Then there is the neighborhood stray cat. That's the government. It has sharp claws, treads quietly and tries to keep things orderly, but has no wings. It makes an inept appearance once in a while and occasionally grabs a laggard sparrow too slow or stupid to get away, but for the most part it is useless. You're the investor, feeding the maw. The bird feeder becomes empty and all the birds go away. You lug the 35-pound bag of seed out, fill up the feeder, and start the whole cycle again. If you got something back, like gratitude, it would be nice, but the most you'll probably get are some stains on your deck to clean up. And so it continues.
That's pretty much all you need to know. If you want to get more deeply into it, however, pick up a novel by Christopher Reich. Reich's specialty is in the area of financial market thrillers. That term may seem like a contradiction in terms --- along the lines of "jumbo shrimp" or, alas, "legal ethics" --- but that's what he does, and does it quite well. His books are giant "for examples" of how the financial world works. I'm not talking about walking into Best Buy and trying to haggle the 16-year-old clerk into letting you finance that plasma screen TV you've had your eye on. I'm talking 67th floor, gnomes of Zurich stuff, the stuff that makes you feel helpless, inept, poor and really, really angry.
THE FIRST BILLION is Reich's third novel, and while Reich at times attempts to do a little too much with it, the title remains a good solid read. The story centers on John "Jett" Gavallan and his company, Black Jet Securities, as they prepare to take Mercury, Russia's top media company, public on the New York Stock Exchange. Gavallan is taking major risks to do this, including the use of Black Jet's own capital to float the offering. When rumors of fraud start to swirl in the financial waters surrounding the offering, Gavallan dispatches Grafton Byrnes, his business partner and best friend, to Russia to personally investigate whether or not Mercury is everything it is supposed to be. When Byrnes disappears, Gavallan starts an investigation of his own, attempting to salvage the future of his company as well as rescue Byrnes.
His search takes him on a dangerous trail across the United States, from San Francisco to West Palm Beach, and then around the world from Zurich to Moscow, where he discovers the truth about Mercury, Black Jet, and the enigmatic Cate Magnus, who mysteriously and abruptly left Gavallan's life as he was about to reach the pinnacle of his success. Gavallan discovers that Black Jet is being used by an entity far larger than Mercury for a purpose far more diabolical than a stock fraud. In Russia, almost alone, with only his wits to carry him through, Gavallan finds that he must put a stop to what is about to occur, for the stakes are much larger than his company.
Reich does an incredible job of explaining to his audience the complexities of higher finance and the way money works --- he makes it not only understandable but also exciting. Speaking only for myself, making such a topic understandable is akin to explaining the concept of rocket propulsion to a six-week-old beagle and seeing the light of comprehension spring into its eyes. There are many parts to the game Reich sets up, and while it may seem to take him a while to get the board operational, you'll be glad that things move slowly before he really picks up speed and starts moving things along.
If there's a problem at all with THE FIRST BILLION, it's that many of the characters are a touch too complex. Gavallan would have made an interesting character without his Gulf War baggage, which for some reason wasn't entirely convincing. Ditto for Magnus, whose background slowly became somewhat improbable. And I probably could have done without the pairing of Boris and Tatiana; I kept waiting for one of them to say "Look! There go Moose and Squirrel!" Additionally, THE FIRST BILLION might have been a more streamlined read if Reich had been able to resist stopping the action intermittently to fill in the backstory, a process that eventually becomes tedious.
These shortcomings, however, are minor compared to what Reich has done, which is to rip back the veil to reveal what really, and ultimately, goes on behind the scenes, and to make you want to know as well. Recommended.
--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub
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