Death Force Review In City AM

There is a great review of Death Force in City AM by Jeremy Hazlehurst. "'The sweat and smoke and stench of a Baghdad brothel at two in the morning are enough to turn even the strongest stomach,' begins this novel, and it goes unrelentingly on in the same zippy, devil-may-care vein." After a brief description, it continues. "Their world is drawn with skill and detail - people keep blood plasma in the fridge and take rocket propelled grenades into bars - and for all its bravado and machismo, it is a belivable setting, with its black humour and brutal violence, hard-drinking and casual sex. And while these boys are tough, they're not to tough to wear chinos or iron their jeans. If you like this sort of thing, this is a well-told, cracking tale of manly doings in a shadowy environment."

The UK Economy Keeps Sinking

The Bank of Ireland's statement this morning that it was running down its UK mortgage business - with a total of £29 billion in outstanding loans - is a small but telling illustration of why this is going to be a very tough recession for the UK. It is precisely those flows of forign capital that have kept the UK so bouyant. Thirty billion here and there soon adds up. But those taps are now being turned off. With sterling getting pummelled it will be a long time before anything replaces it. The UK will have to re-balance itself more towards exports but it will be a long hard struggle.

The Hedge Fund Catastrophe

FT Alphaville is one of my favorite financial sites - it is about the first thing I log into when I turn on my computer - so I was pleased to see they ran my Bloomberg column on hedge funds today. Likewise The Times. A lot of response to the basic argument, which was that by stopping their investors from taking their money out, the funds were doing a lot of damage to their reputation. One reader pointed out that it was much the same as the ban on short-selling last year - which, of course, the hedge funds objected to loudly. Another pointed out that it was similar to emerging markets closing up for a few days - such as Malaysia, Thailand, or more recently Russia. True enough. The funds are guilty of gross hypocrisy. There were already having a rough time. But I suspect this kind of crass response means they are just about finished.

...And on Wall Street Blips

I hadn't come across Wall Street Blips before but it looks like a useful site that pulls togeher the most read, commented on financial commentary. So I was pleased to see my Bloomberg predictions column featuring on its top list. Likewise, on Infectious Greed, which is already one of my favourite sites.

Predictions in...China

I was pleased to see my Bloomberg column of new year predictions re-printed in the China Post. I'm not sure if I've been in that paper before.

Saving the World...?

The catastrophe of Gordon Brown's response to the recession is becoming clearer by the day. It now looks as if his recuse of the British banking system - which saved the world, let's remember - is falling apart. The papers are reporting that another bail-out is being considered, and this one might involve a 'bad bank' which would take the toxic assets of the bank's balance sheets. Like the original Paulson plan, that makes a lot more sense. You need to drain the toxic assets out of the system before the banks can get back to normal. Brown's plan just pumped more capital into them without fixing the problem - and may well end up with a nationalised banking system, which will just make the problem even worse.

The real problem for the UK is that it was pumped up on a wave of foreign capital, and that has now fled. The botched bank rescue and, even worse, the destruction of the public finances, has scared foreign capital away, and looks likely to push the UK into deep recession.

International Thriller Writers

I just joined the International Thriller Writers association to start helping to promote 'Death Force', which is out in a couple of weeks time. It looks like a great organisation, even if it is quite US dominated. When I first started publishing as a novelist when 'Insecurity' came out in 1997 I joined the Crime Writers Association. But I found it very dominated by the crime writers and their audience. They are very different, in my judgement. I never read crime books, and the leading writers in the genre I have sampled - such as Ian Rankin - seem to me to be leaden and cliched. Surely the world doesn't need yet another dysfunctional middle-aged copper with a drink problem. The thriller and crime markets are completely seperate and it doesn't make any sense to try and lump them together.