The Silent Oligarch

Starred review from November 7, 2011
Jones’s smart first novel, a taut thriller about a money-laundering Russian oligarch, invites favorable comparisons to the work of John le Carré. British-born Richard Lock, a lawyer and front man for Russian oil minister Konstantin Malin, is being sued by Greek businessman Aristotle Tourna, who believes he has been grievously wronged by the Russian minister. When Tourna hires a London investigative firm, Ikertu Consulting, to get the goods on Malin, Ikertu investigator Ben Webster is eager to take the job because he believes Malin is complicit in the death of his Russian journalist friend, Inessa. This fine character study presents Lock as conflicted and fearful, wanting to escape his position and flee Russia, while Webster comes to realize that justice in this case is not as black and white as he would like to believe. Readers will look forward to the follow-up from the talented Jones, who worked for 11 years at Kroll, the world’s largest business intelligence company.

November 1, 2011
In the bowels of the Russian government's petroleum ministry lurks an anonymous bureaucrat named Konstatin Malin, at least when he is not flying off to his estate on the Côte d'Azur. Malin secretly controls an obscure Irish company called Faringdon Holdings. More accurately, he controls Richard Lock, an Anglo-Dutch lawyer, who nominally owns Faringdon, and its pyramid of other shadowy Société Anonyme registered in random off-shore tax havens. Money flows from the Russian oil fields, and handsome amounts are diverted to these Malin-controlled enterprises. Malin made a mistake, though. He had Lock shift a few assets and sell an empty corporate shell to a fractious Greek named Aristotle Tourna. Lawsuits are filed and regulatory agencies awaken. Tourna also hires Ikertu Consulting, a corporate security firm located in London, an unofficial, non-gun-toting CIA or FBI for billionaires in trouble. Ikertu's top investigator is Ben Webster, a former freelance writer with extensive experience in post-Soviet Russia. Webster knows that Richard Lock, "a fraud, a stooge, a money launderer," is the key to Malin, but as he delves into the three-card-Monte commercial empire, he is shocked to uncover evidence that the murder of a close friend and fellow investigative reporter a decade previously may have been the result of her attempt to expose Malin. Jones' sketches of all that is good and bad about London, Moscow, Berlin seem dead-on, right down to his marvelous detailing of the decadent lifestyle of the new Russian oligarchy, a group where school children receive Ferraris as birthday presents. His bad guy, Malin, "impermeable" eyes "dark brown and heavy, neither curious nor passive," is thoroughly sinister. The author also is adept at constructing and explaining the complicated post-Soviet Russia ambiance. Told in the third person, his narrative moves forward with an aura of malevolence to a conclusion too close to reality to be anything but believable. Minimal gun-flourishing, minimal violence, maximum moral quandary.

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August 1, 2011

Reporter-turned-investigator at a London corporate intelligence firm, Benjamin Webster is suspicious of Konstantin Malin, a disarmingly gray little bureaucrat in the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources who seems to control half of the country's oil industry. Malin may also have arranged the murder of a tough-minded journalist, a colleague of Webster's a decade ago. First novelist Jones worked in business intelligence for more than ten years. Nicely tapped into current events, keeping things fresh.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2011
This is a happy partner to the work of Deighton, Archer, and le Carr'. Mysterious men, cryptic of speech and beautifully tailored, move through glittery settingsseacoasts, grand hotels, swank neighborhoodscarried on craftily understated prose that approaches cold poetry. Rows of massive buildings bullied all the leaves off the bare limes and left the trees cowering in the middle of the road. Ben Webster is a snoop employed by a London corporate espionage firm. His boss' client has hired the company to bring down a Kremlin functionary, the toadlike Malin, whose manipulation of Russia's oil industry is making him a trillionaire. Webster attempts to get at the toad through his dithering money launderer, Richard Lock. Reader identification is complete. We'd like to be Webstertough, smartbut we know we're really more like Lock, not as bright and strong as we wish. Men are betrayed. Drugged. Kidnapped. Tossed off buildings. Downed by snipers. If the good guys win, it's at such a cost they're left wondering if they accomplished anything. They did. They were part of a first-class novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)