Fast-paced, perceptive and oh so very, very clever this is an amazing must-read financial thriller which is totally mind blowing! Rob Tanner is Chief Operating Officer in a major UK bank. On Christmas Eve he receives a red flag phone call from the bank’s Chief Risk Officer confirming a thousand of the bank’s accounts have inexplicably increased exactly ten fold in the past twenty fours hours. On the same day Martin Kellet, the highly unpopular Chief Executive Officer, receives an enigmatic email from Joen van Aken referring to the inflated bank accounts. Tanner learns that Joen van Aken is the birth name of Hieronymus Bosch, the medieval Dutch painter whose best known work is The Garden of Earthly Delights famous for portraying the seven deadly sins. More inflated banking errors occur, and more banks become affected resulting in frantic assembling of COBRA meetings in Whitehall. A leading US security expert is appointed and the race is on to try to decipher the coding behind the cyber attack before bank accounts are destroyed and financial markets collapse. Tanner, and the Prime Minister James Allen receive further emails from Joen van Aken, all of which contain references to the seven deadly sins as highlighted in the Bosch masterpiece. The intention behind the attacks is mysteriously hidden within cryptic biblical and musical references as Joen van Aken teases and taunts Tanner and Allen. London is not only in the grip of a winter snow-storm, but also in the grip of the most sophisticated cyber attack ever experienced. Tense, thought-provoking and extremely skilful, this inaugural novel from Simon Hayes is just exquisite. If you enjoy a great thriller look no further – they don’t come much better than this!
23 December 2024… Rob Tanner should have been enjoying a rare day off from his life-consuming work as Chief Operating Officer at one of the country's largest banks. But a panicked phone call from a senior colleague forces him to put his Christmas plans on ice: more than a thousand of the bank's accounts have seen their balances increased by a factor of ten. Exactly ten. Through the inexplicably simple addition of an extra zero. And when the inflated balances prove to be neither early Christmas gifts, nor a botched computer system upgrade, but the most sophisticated cyber attack in history, Tanner finds himself in the eye of a "Black Swan' storm no one predicted, but anyone could have anticipated. Tanner enlists the help of brilliant American cyber security expert Ashley Markham, but the attacks only worsen: bank balances rise remorselessly and spread to all the nation's banks. The only clues to the hacker's intentions are cryptic daily emails, centred on Hieronymus Bosch's medieval representation of the seven deadly sins?and packed with colourful artistic and cultural references?taunting Tanner and the newly incumbent Prime Minister, James Allen. With financial markets?and the very world as he knows it?on the brink of collapse, Tanner races against the clock to decode not just the bizarre emails but their deeper meaning, and the implications for who he can really trust. All the while, his former boss “The Toad” is seeking revenge... and answers of his own. This enthralling, multi-layered debut follows the story of a disillusioned banker facing unthinkable financial Armageddon, where money has no value, stock and bond prices are meaningless, and the economy is destroyed. Can Tanner unravel the mystery of the hacker's obsession with Bosch, sin and retribution before modern society returns to the dark ages?
