Bad Money

by Louise Patten

Mary Kersey, the breadwinner in her family, juggles her job as a high-flying management consultant at Lock Chase with trying to be a good mother to her 8-year-old daughter Grace and keeping Trister, her husband's ancestral home in Suffolk, in a decent state of repair. It is enough to challenge the most organised of women. When the headmistress of Grace's boarding school calls to say that Grace is acutely homesick and should come home, the demands on Mary's time and energy become almost overwhelming. Dr Alan Dove is CEO of biotechnology company, Pneumatech. He wants to buy a competitor who specialises in cosmetics, F-ACE. They'd be a perfect fit if only he could afford them. Enter Ivan Strawe, evil genius head of M & A at Wolkenbank, who'll find a way to lower the F-ACE share price with the help of a hedge fund that's only too happy to help. Of course there'll be a nice little cut for all of them once the deal goes through. Meanwhile Mary, who surprisingly retains a conscience in this dog-eat-dog world, is recruited by the Treasury to investigate dodgy dealings at hedge funds. Her world and that of Dove and Kona are set on a collision course

• ISBN10: 1847249132
• ISBN13: 9781847249135
• Publish Date: 3 September 2009
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 1 January 2011
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Quercus Publishing
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[Leah]

Mary Kersey is trying to juggle working in the City with being a good mum and a good wife as well as keeping the home they live in liveable.

Alan Dove, an ambitious CEO of a biotechnology company, decides to buy up another company along with the help of Ivan, an investment banker and a dodgy hedge-fund investor, Mary is thrust into the world of scandal as she believes something is wrong with the way Alan and co. took over F-ACE.

Trouble is, not everybody is happy with her interfering ways…

First off Bad Money is not the type of book I usually read. It’s not character driven and it’s not chick-lit. I really don’t know what category to put it in, it’s women’s fiction I suppose. I also have to mention the cover. I HATE it. Mine is in black and white but the actual cover has red in it and I just do not like it. The silouette of the woman doesn’t really work. Thankfully, the book is much better than the cover!

As I said, Bad Money is not character driven it’s more plot-driven. At first I thought there were far too many characters and I found it difficult to get into a rhythm with the book but after a while, once I’d sorted out who everybody was I found the book absorbing.

It’s billed as an expose on what really goes on in the City and it is quite an eye-opener. I wouldn’t have thought reading about the City would interest me but it really did. I have no idea how much of it actually happens but since Louise Patten used to work there I’d assume most of what happened would be plausible.

Bad Money gives a lot of insight into exactly how the City works so you do have to pay attention to take it all in. It’s written in third person and alternates between Mary, Alan Dove and Ivan as well as some of the other characters. While it’s not a character driven book, there are plenty of them within the book, as I mentioned.

I’d say Mary was the main player within the book, working to find out the truth about Alan Dove’s takeover of F-ACE. Platon Dyengi and Ivan Straw were completely evil characters helping out Alan Dove with his take-over. The ending between those two shocked me completely. Other main players in the book were those that worked with Mary, Urban and Spider. I liked those two and felt we learnt more about Spider than any of the other characters combined. I knew Spider had some problems with Dove but was surprised when all was revealed. There were also Meg Dewey, Amy Flower and Beth Scott, three women who were quite important to the plot, the former two more so than the latter.

There were other characters in the book, too. Mainly the characters families. As I said, there are a lot of characters to keep you occupied and it was difficult to keep track of them all.

The whole book was one big roller-coaster ride, never really letting up. There was always drama and threats going on. I applaud Louise for that for keeping the excitement up and the pace going. Her writing is excellent and really helped my enjoyment of the book.

Now onto the things I didn’t like. The only thing I didn’t like about the book (bar the cover!) was the ending. It was all a bit anti-climatic. Everything happens and explodes, we find out exactly what’s going on and how everyone is connected and then…. that’s all. There was comeuppance for certain characters (including some gruesome comeuppances!) but some of the characters got away with it. That disappointed me and I wonder if maybe that’s paving the way for a sequel? I’ll have to find out, as there’s nothing worse than reading about characters, finding out about the bad things they’ve done and then see them get away with it.

Overall it was a very interesting read, but I found the ending a let down. I would however recommend you give it a read if you’ve always wanted to know exactly what goes on in the City. Oh, and don’t judge the book by it’s cover!

Rating: 4/5

I’d like to thank Quercus for sending me the copy to review!