BANK, THE

Count on THE BANK for not making the Wall Street Journal's ten best list; it's a dark, sinister business thriller for the 21st century, what “Wall Street” was to the eighties and “Boiler Room” to the nineties, with a borderline sci-fi twist. Mathematical genius Jim Doyle's specialty is chaos theory and Mandelbrot circles; ruthless CEO Alan Simon's specialty is acquiring ever greater and greater wealth for his multinational financial institution CentaBank, no matter what the human cost. Doyle approaches CentaBank with an audacious offer – to perfect a computer program which can predict with frightening accuracy the seemingly-random fluctuations in the international stock exchanges. If it works successfully, the sharklike suits of CentaBank will have a window into the market futures, and essentially wield Godlike power over the global economy. Meanwhile, in the Australian hinterlands, a small, seemingly irrelevant family tragedy sets in motion a chain of events that will diagram an equation of intrigue, betrayal and revenge at the highest levels – with interest. The stakes are incalculable, the payback dire, in a suspenseful tale as sharp, sleek and dangerously close to the vein as your new ATM card.