A great family of merchant bankers, infected by the poison of ambition and greed. For the Pilasters, sex and love are weapons in a war for power and wealth. One explosive secret becomes the weak link that can bring down a dynasty. In 1866, tragedy strikes at an exclusive public school. A pupil drowns in a mysterious accident involving several boys. Among them ate young High Pilaster; his cousin Edward, the weak, dissolute heir to the Pilaster banking fortune; and Micky Miranda, the darkly handsome son of a brutal South American landowner. The drowning and its aftermath initiate a spiralling circle of treachery that will last three decades and entwine many lives...Spanning the years when an empire tightens its grip on a faraway world and revolution begets a tide of violent change, A Dangerous Fortune portrays a family bound inexorably by a shared legacy, and brings us men and women swept towards a perilous climax where greed, fed by the shocking truth of a boy's death, must be stopped otherwise not just one man's dreams, but those of a nation, will die.
Loved it. This was a nice change from the WWII era Follett that I’ve read. However, there’s one thing that ties all of his books together for me — his characters. They are always captivating and complex and interesting. The banking stuff is even written in a way that I can understand! The book covers 26 years in the life of a family, and in the end, the good and the bad both get what they’re due — just the way it should be!
