Other People's Money

After more than 300 years of fiscal prudence and guaranteed discretion in all matters, the exclusive London family bank of Trevelyan-Tubal is in a spot of bother. It seems they have rather over-stretched themselves and have lost a small fortune dabbling in hedge funds, derivatives and other areas it turns out neither they nor anyone else knew very much about. As the old patriarch of the family comes to the end of his life, his son – the reluctant inheritor of the bank who led it into peril – must move some money around (more or less illegally) to get out of this mess for once and for all.

The really first-rate novelists have had quite long enough to sharpen their knives and we are now seeing some excellent novels about this pesky global financial crisis. Other People’s Money is funny, thoughtful and intelligent. While DBC Pierre’s vibrant and debauched Lights Out in Wonderland captured the depravity and irresponsibility of those who led the world into meltdown, Cartwright wields a scalpel, prodding and carefully dissecting the basic incompetence of the bankers and those who were in power. He almost lets you see them as ordinary people – weak, flawed, human and normal just like you or me. But in the end, that’s just his point: weak, flawed, human and normal people just like you or me are the last people who should be running a bank.