The Wealth of Shadows

December 1, 2023

Best seller and Academy Award winner Moore (The Holdout; The Imitation Game) sets his newest in 1939, as tax attorney Ansel Luxford enlists in a secret mission to crash the Nazi economy. Warfare through finance is a dangerous game, involving J.P. Morgan, John Maynard Keynes, spies, and great peril near and far. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 4, 2024
Screenwriter and novelist Moore (The Holdout) walks a fine line between fact and fiction in this flat historical thriller about the U.S. Treasury Department’s efforts to undermine the Nazi war machine. Leading the action are two real-life figures: Treasury official Harry White and his underling, Ansel Luxford, a tax attorney from Minneapolis recruited in 1939 to figure out a way to sabotage Germany’s economy without involving the U.S. military. Despite pulling all the financial levers at their disposal, from trade wars to surveillance, White and Luxford meet a series of dead ends. In response, they use their expertise to help England boost its military offensives against Germany, a move that brings them into close contact with Churchill adviser John Maynard Keynes. The allies’ efforts climax at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, where world leaders discuss how to use a global currency—the dollar—to prevent future wars. Despite attempts to enliven the plot with snappy prose (“We’re going to learn how it works, and then we’re going to light the son of a bitch on fire,” one character exclaims about the German economy), Moore too often gets bogged down by extended discussions of the intricacies of international currency exchange and other financial matters. This may appeal to students of monetary policy, but others are likely to find it dull. Agent: Jennifer Joel, CAA.

March 15, 2024
America pits dollars against reichsmarks in this tale of economic warfare. In August 1939, war has not quite begun. In Minnesota, government employee Ansel Luxford is horrified at the looming Nazi threat. He goes to work for the U.S. Treasury Department with a plan to fight Hitler: Dry up his source of money to purchase war materiel. Then hostilities begin, and if the U.S., which is legally neutral, is going to provide critical goods to France and Great Britain, it must also be willing to sell to Germany. How to get around that? Let the Germans know that they must pay in U.S. dollars and not reichsmarks, and make sure they don't have those dollars to pay. And then "lend" the U.K. 150 million bullets and lots of military hardware, like tanks. That oversimplifies the plot, but that's the gist. Using meticulous research, the author recounts a little-known aspect of the fight against the Nazis. All the characters and biographical details are historically accurate but for a few the author acknowledges at the end. The result is a painless tutorial in economic theory, with vigorous debates about the value of the dollar versus sterling. Once America is in the war, talk turns to the future: Could a world bank and an international monetary fund prevent future global conflicts? The story doesn't show any dramatic pain suffered by the Germans, perhaps because a dollar desert and Nazi battlefield losses are hard to conflate in a scene. The characters are fascinating, such as Harry Dexter White, a senior U.S. Treasury official believed to have been a Soviet spy, and the brilliant and arrogant John Maynard Keynes. The author lifts Luxford from complete obscurity into quiet heroism, apparently well deserved. There's a mystery about a displaced paper clip and a threat with an unloaded pistol, but little else titillates the senses. Still, the story flows well and will hold readers' attention. Fans of historical fiction will like this unusual take on World War II.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

April 15, 2024
December 7, 1941, sees Department of the Treasury attorney Ansel Luxford--a real person, like the numerous historical persons who walk these pages--in his Washington, DC, home when a radio broadcast tells him the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor. America is in the war. He nearly implodes with joy. ""It's over!"" The Allies have won. Too bad about the 418,500 Americans about to die, not to mention the global millions, to confirm Ansel's glee at a foregone conclusion. Ansel has been watching--and sometimes assisting--the international traders who know Japan doesn't have the gasoline, or the Germans the cold weather cotton, to stay in the war. Moore loads his history, which he swears is true, with dozens of these ""who knew?"" tidbits that spice up his narrative of money machinations. Alas, he slugs his tale with yards and yards of dismal economic theory. Still, readers shouldn't miss a chance to learn which army lost a big war partly because they couldn't afford bullets. Or the high government official forced out after asking male railroad workers for sex.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.