Money Tree
"..Ferris writes with his finger on the pulse and executes a complex plot with dexterity and pure class."
Synopsis:
New Delhi: Anila Jhabvala, a destitute village-woman, plunges into the teeming streets of her capital on a mad mission to escape the daily embrace of usury.
New York: Ted Saddler, a top American journalist, savages the explosively growing People's Bank for ripping off the poor.
Erin Wishart, an obstinate Scot with a late-developing conscience, accuses Ted of lies and distortions. The search for the truth uncovers a sordid tale of ruthless ambition, global crime, and murder.
The three lives collide in a tangle of emotion and fast-paced action among the treacherous alleyways of Kolkata and the vice-filled towers of corporate Manhattan.
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Review:
Gordon Ferris, creator of the Douglas Brodie and Danny McRae novels has left behind the post-WW2 years of a battered, bruised, and corrupt Glasgow, and written a contemporary thriller set in the mysterious world of banking. The corrupt nature of the financial world is known to all of us since the economic downturn, and has been the subject of many second-rate thrillers in the last few years. In the capable hands of Ferris, with his deft handling of characterisation and setting, he has delivered a highly intelligent story with a social conscience. The plot splits between the corporate world in America to the backwaters of India where women are second-class citizens and life is very basic. The contrast is vast, eye-opening, and bravely written. What could have been a preachy story of greed is actually an original and engrossing novel. Ferris is a talented and evocative writer. As with Douglas Brodie, he has created a flawed and likeable protagonist without descending into melodrama. Ted Saddler is an everyman. In contrast, the villains are also well developed. It would be easy to make the financial fat-cats two-dimensional cartoon baddies, but Ferris writes with his finger on the pulse and executes a complex plot with dexterity and pure class.