Product Description

Three seemingly independent events occur one morning in London: an MP wakes up after spending the night with a woman he picked up in a bar; a tycoon meets a Bank of England official for breakfast; and a criminal briefs his crew. A journalist struggles to unravel the truth behind the three events.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64657 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
Like The Modigliani Scandal (US, 1985), this ironic caper-thriller, written under the Zachary Stone pseudonym in 1976, is appearing for the first time in US hardcover. And, though short on emotional involvement, it's a clever, leanly vivid pinwheel of criss-crossing London subplots, involving one heist, one high-finance scare, and newspapermen covering the fallout from the two crimes. Shady tycoon Felix Laski is about to pay a nasty bargain price for the conglomerate owned by blueblood Derek Hamilton - thanks to insider info gained by blackmailing a sexually indiscreet Cabinet minister. Meanwhile, with a bit of help from Laski, sleazy crook Tony Cox and his motley mob are about to hijack a van containing millions in UK currency. But things go slightly wrong with the two virtually simultaneous operations: the Cabinet minister attempts suicide (after blabbing to Fleet Street); the hapless heisters are sidetracked by an accidental shooting and a minor car. crash; Laski's takeover bid runs into major cash-flow problems. And so glimmers of the troth start surfacing at the Evening Post - where a veteran sub-editor (jaded, bitter) and an eager young reporter (semi-idealistic) argue about how the story should be covered. Follett does a solid, flavorsome job with vignettes and quick, sketch character portraits, as the focus keeps shifting from low-life to high-life, from boardrooms to the Post's very convincing newsroom. So, though the cat's-cradle plot is a bit too contrived, this is crisp, cynically amusing, small-scale entertainment - without the passionate heroics (or the frequent lapses and longueurs) of Follett's later bestseller-style. (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Perfect for a short holiday trip
Having trouble finding enlish literature in o.v. in latinamerica "Paper Money" was the first book of Ken Follet as well as the first one in spanish I read. Putting aside differences that might arise through translating it I found it to be a marvelos novel, concentrating the whole plot taking place in only one day, divided into hours. In his foreword Follet says he considers this book as "his best without success" he ever wrote, stating as well that this might be because of the numerous caracters he uses in a quite complex story. For me it turned out to be a real "pageturner" and I think you should read it right this way. Beeing rather short you can get trough it in just a couple of days. My advice: Worth reading one of Follets very first works published as far back as 1976.

A fairly quick read with a complex plot
Ken Follett is one of my favourite authors - his epic "Pillars of the Earth" is probably the one work of fiction I enjoyed the most.

This book is a rather different kind of book in several ways - the story is considerably shorter, and thus it won't take you long to read it. There is also less of the lush descriptive detail that makes some of his other books so immersive. Despite this, there is still a very intricate plot, involving many quirky characters with outrageous backgrounds, and there is a sense of dry humour sprinkled throughout.

I did enjoy the book, but I can't say I enjoyed it as much as I did some of his others. I found myself getting characters mixed up, and several times I had to turn back to an earlier page to try and find that missed detail.

It seems appropriate, then, that the author himself should have said in his foreword, "Clever plots satisfy authors more than readers." As a writer I would have been proud of writing "Paper Money", but admittedly it's not one of the first books I would pick up on a cold winter evening by the fireplace.

A fast moving 24hrs worth of entwined plots in 70's London
One of Follett's early novellas which could do without the largely apologetic preface from the great man. I enjoyed it as the pace of the story and the sheer amount of sub-plots would today be glorified and acclaimed if filmed and directed by a pseudo Guy Ritchie. Easy read - enjoy it for what it is and what became of the author subsequently.