THE BANKER'S BOX

In this financial thriller, a Vancouver banker inadvertently stumbles into the cross hairs of a Chinese criminal empire. 

Neil Mohle serves as the principal banker on a massive business deal that connects a Vancouver company, Woodstock LNG, with “Chinese state-owned offshore energy group partners” to build a liquefied natural gas plant in British Columbia. The complicated arrangement is nearly derailed by a government demand for local equity, but a Vancouver firm, Monger Capital, offers to help without any board representation in exchange. But Neil struggles to vet Monger Capital, which has largely flown under the radar of regulatory attention. A fateful conversation changes all that as well as his life. His wife, Vivian, overhears an exchange in her salon in which she learns that her client Kitty Lee is the daughter of billionaire Quon Jin Hu. He owns a considerable stake in Monger Capital and turns out to be the infamous Komodo, the head of a shadowy Chinese criminal organization. When the notoriously secretive Quon discovers his daughter’s indiscretion, he puts contracts out on both Neil’s and Vivian’s lives, and they are forced to disappear to survive. Meanwhile, Hayden Jones, an officer with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, works his way into the “inner circle” of British Columbia Premier Dana Holmes, investigating Chinese money laundering. His mission takes a new turn when the Mohles become targets for assassination. Bentley (The Bermuda Key, 2015, etc.) meticulously weaves an impressively intricate plot brimming with nuance and intelligence. In addition, the story is as clever as it is suspenseful—the author intriguingly demonstrates the way in which a causal conversation can have profoundly fateful ramifications. But he lingers far too long—and with microscopic specificity—on the minute details of the financial agreement that sets the whole tale in motion. Readers can’t help but feel at times that they are passive witnesses to a very long board meeting. For those who find the machinations of such transactions captivating, or at least can muster some measure of tolerance for them, their patience will be well rewarded by an otherwise gripping tale.

An astutely conveyed and genuinely engrossing story weighed down by too many details about a complex business deal.