Books in the Media: Oliver Bullough's 'much-needed exposé' of money laundering impresses

This week, two non-fiction titles examine a corrupt financial network and the UK’s justice system, while a timely crime and thriller title makes an impact and former Booker-winner George Saunders returns. 

Oliver Bullough’s latest, Everybody Loves Our Dollars: How Money Laundering Won (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), explores the “complex global problem” of money laundering. It is “such an important book”, noted the Financial Times’ Philip Augar, who described Bullough as “an expert guide”, offering “detailed accounts of money laundering over the years”. A short “powerful” chapter on compliance “should be required reading for every politician, regulator and board member with an interest in the financial services industry,” stated Augar. John Simpson, reviewing for the Guardian, called Bullough “one of Britain’s finest investigative reporters. He is thorough, his sources are impressive, and he has a lovely, easy style which takes us through some of the darkest features of the world’s economy”. Everybody Loves Our Dollars is a “much-needed exposé”, he added.

Writing for the Guardian, Olivia Laing reviewed Izabella Scott’s The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial (Atlantic). Pulled together from the court transcripts, Scott examines the trial of Gayle Newland who was convicted of three counts of sexual assault at both trial and retrial and explores the social and cultural history of “sex by deception”. Laing wrote: “Scott is less interested in whether this was the correct verdict than she is in investigating the larger meanings of this strange, sad trial, which exposed the private lives of both participants to ridicule.” Scott’s “deepest interest”, the review continued, is “in how the court’s binary vision – of truth and lies, deception and innocence – collides with more complicated narratives around queerness and gender”. The Times’ Sarah Ditum called The Bed Trick a “riveting and revealing book that takes the reader deep into the processes of justice and law”.  

The Persians (Swift Press), the “outstanding” new thriller by former CIA analyst David McCloskey follows Esfahani, a Persian-Jewish dentist recruited by Mossad to an “elite unit operating in Tehran, killing high-value Iranian targets”. Now imprisoned by Iran’s intelligence service, Esfahani must write out “again and again, his account of the Mossad operation for his captor”. The Financial Times’ Adam LeBor found that framing the narrative “through Esfahani’s recollections is an audacious approach but the story never flags”. He added: “The notable strength of this book, like the rest of McCloskey’s oeuvre, is the depth and complexity of his characters, especially its female cast.” A “masterful work of fiction – one deeply informed by a profound understanding of the Middle East and the forces that seek to reshape it, both light and dark”, the review concluded. The Sunday Times’ Matthew Campbell said the novel “could scarcely be more topical”. In an interview with Campbell, McCloskey said: “You don’t have to make a lot of stuff up to have a compelling spy novel plot. Reality often scoops fiction. The world is full of conflict – and conflict is the beating heart of fiction.”

Anthony Cummins at the Observer described George Saunders’ new novel Vigil (Bloomsbury) as “tender”. The story charts the haunting of elderly oil executive KJ Boone and the “host of apparitions”, coordinated by the ghost of a young woman called Jill, that hope to make him change his ways. For Cummins “intrigue thrums everywhere you look” and “Saunders keeps preachiness at bay by making sure never to lose sight of the abiding agony of an 87-year-old man dying in pain”. Writing for the Spectator, Lee Langley called Vigil “a Christmas Carol for our times, targeting corporate greed, consumerism and climate change”.