In this novel, a British professor tackles an unusual case—a masterful embezzlement immediately followed by the perpetrator’s murder.

Julia Larwood, a London barrister, is hired to perform what she considers a nonsensical duty—her client, Kurt Wenner, requests help transferring a considerable sum of money from London to an account in the Channel Islands and then to one in Switzerland. Nevertheless, Wenner presents himself as the “epitome of the distinguished, conservative Swiss private banker,” a sophisticated, cosmopolitan man who otherwise provokes no suspicion. But Wenner turns out not to be as trustworthy as he appears. Using Julia’s unwitting assistance—she is among the “best international tax experts in London”—he walks into a Swiss bank and soon leaves with more than $2 million in gold, all of it packed into the trunk of his car, and then vanishes like evaporated water. With the help of professor Hilary Tamar, a tutor in legal history at St. George’s College, Oxford, as well as her barrister colleagues, Julia uncovers even more dramatic news. Shortly after his brilliant heist, Wenner drives his car off a cliff and dies, though the gold is nowhere to be found. Later, the crew discovers that Wenner was certainly dead before the car plummeted to its destruction and that he was fatally bludgeoned by a blunt instrument beforehand. Imad El Qasim, a banking colleague and apparent partner in crime as well as a prime suspect in the man’s death, turns up dead, too, murdered in Luxor, Egypt, before Wenner perished.

Hallengren’s tale is essentially an exercise in fan fiction, a continuation of a popular murder-mystery series penned by Sarah Caudwell in the 1980s that features the same crowd of barristers and Hilary as the lead sleuth. He certainly captures the spirit of Caudwell’s creations—distinctively British, lightsomely bantering, and, as far as the crime in question is involved, exceedingly complex, if not convoluted. The best part of the book is, in fact, the cheeky humor that underscores it all— Michael Cantrip, one of Julia’s colleagues, finds himself in hot water after he inadvertently helps Wenner commit his crime. Cantrip then redeems himself by gathering information from Röndi, Wenner’s daughter, with whom he conducts a romantic liaison. And Hilary is a memorable character—by turns brilliant and insufferably pompous but somehow always charming. Still, the plot moves at a glacially slow pace, sometimes so sluggish that movement becomes almost indiscernible. Hallengren has an inclination for long digressions that roll like a snowball into a detour. There are too many subplots, too many longueurs, and too much dwelling on information that doesn’t push an immobile plot. This is a shame since the drama of the crime itself is genuinely gripping—Wenner’s buried past turns out to be as compelling as it is unsavory. But at over 300 pages, the work would have benefited from being shorter. True enthusiasts of Caudwell’s novels will be able to summon the necessary patience, but many readers will not.

An intriguing and amusing but slow-moving murder mystery.

In this debut fictional memoir, a banker recounts his serial attempts at opportunistic fraud.

Both a U.S. and Swiss citizen, Kurt Wenner, working as an investment banker in Zurich in 1965, travels to South America on assignment. While there, he is tasked with transferring the money from a client’s account to his daughter’s. But the man dies before her account number is affixed to the proper form, leaving Wenner with an unexpected opportunity to seize the funds himself, something his wife, Ingrid, enthusiastically encourages him to do. But his theft is eventually discovered, and he flees to New York to avoid arrest, leaving his pregnant wife behind. Wenner gets work at several firms before landing a job at Morris, Brunner & Company, where he manages a European stock fund. Once again, he finds himself in trouble with his superiors after he dishonestly inflates the performance of his fund by diverting the money from unsettled trades into it, a possibility he learns by chance. He’s able to retain his position, though in a diminished state, and begins an affair with his assistant, Susan Maleska, and yet again stumbles on a way to illegally transfer money to an account he establishes in Grand Cayman. Wenner is caught again and convicted of embezzlement but manages to avoid jail time. He leaves New York, eventually ending up managing his own fund in California. But 12 years later, he brazenly returns to New York under the same name, wins a post at Second National Bank, and with the help of a colleague, embarks upon an even grander larceny. Hallengren cleverly builds the entire narrative from Wenner’s perspective, a brilliant and worldly man all but bereft of moral principle. The author subtly constructs a psychological profile of his protagonist—irresistibly drawn not only to illegal reward, but also the frisson of the risk itself. Amazingly, he returns to Zurich more than a decade after he fled the city to try to recover the money he embezzled, a recklessly gratuitous move. He makes a similarly imprudent decision to return to New York after years on the West Coast and to the banking industry under his real name, even calling his old flame, Susan, whom he once coldly abandoned. Since Hallengren allows Wenner to tell the tale—and he proves a fascinatingly unreliable narrator—these dangerous moves are deliciously downplayed as mere errors in strategy. Moreover, the author has Wenner depict himself as a victim of chance more than a scheming culprit, almost insanely unrepentant: “I never wanted to be a criminal. I never set out deliberately to steal anything. That money just seemed to fall from the sky in front of us, and all we did was pick it up.” One wishes Hallengren had furnished more information about Wenner’s early years—how did he become so amorally inclined? Nevertheless, this remains an impressive first novel, sharply written and devilishly conceived. 

A remarkable portrait of a financial kleptomaniac.