The Clayton Account

Oct 4, 2024 3:26 PM

Author:Bill Vidal

The Clayton Account

Thomas Clayton is a City trader working the markets in London's Square Mile and living, financially, on borrowed time. But when he returns home to New York for his father's funeral to discover he has been left nearly $50 million in a numbered Swiss bank account, he's at a complete loss to explain how his professor father could have come by such a sum. Whatever the explanation, the mysterious windfall has come at exactly the right time.

So he travels to Zurich, secures the funds, and tells his wife to make an offer on her dream country mansion. What Tom doesn't know yet is that his father was being used as a 'ghost' to clean up dirty money by a New York laundry operation: really the money belongs to Carlos Morales, Medellin's biggest cocaine baron.

Tom's actions in Europe spark a murderous turf war in the Americas between the cartels of Medellin and Cali, involving a cast of bent lawyers, cops, undercover DEA - and transatlantic assassins who'll stop at nothing or no one to make Tom pay his debt...

Reviews

Terribly clever and enjoyably sly. Great stuff

—— Daily Telegraph

Brings Ruth Rendell irresistibly to mind

—— Independent on Sunday

Fossum's presentation of her characters is marked by an intelligence and compassion that is not often found in the pages of crime fiction

—— Donna Leon , Sunday Times

McNab's great asset is that the heart of his fiction is non-fiction: other thriller writers do their research, but he has actually been there

—— The Sunday Times

The most enthralling, creepiest, grizzliest book I've read in years.

—— CHELSEA CAIN, author of HEARTSICK

So impressive I couldn't put the damned thing down . . . genuine surprises, twists and turns that will keep you turning pages quickly and too late into the night.

—— LA Times

Bracingly original mystery . . . a first-rate crime writer

—— Publishers Weekly

The novel quickly builds to an excruciating level of suspense . . . an excellent thriller, both riveting and precise. The ending is a shocker.

—— Library Journal

Micallef, a nice twist on the traditional middle-aged alcoholic male cop, is wearily, startlingly real.

—— Guardian

A superbly written novel with a brilliantly conceived and realized plot . . . unforgettable.

—— Globe & Mail, Canada

. . . perfectly gripping . . . It is a clever serial/ ritual-murderer tale set in remotest rural Canada, but the most original feature of the story is its principal detective . . . Hazel Micallef is a splendid recruit to the ranks of fictional detectives.

—— Literary Review

Terrifying, moving and complex . . . the first in a sensational series . . . truly compelling . . . a thrilling psychological tale which ratchets up the pace from the intriguing opening scene to the heart-in-the-mouth finale.

—— Peterborough Evening Telegraph

Patterson is in a class by himself.

—— VANITY FAIR

... opens with one of the most chilling murder scenes I've read in a long time ... High-octane stuff

—— Daily Express

I was completely swept along by it. It was absolutely fantastic: I romped through it. It is wonderfully-well and scarily described. There is a James Bond quality. It was inspired. Cross Country has an amazing sense of speed, there's a really brilliant tension in the plot. You really believe in Alex Cross.
You're just completely engrossed in it from start to finish. Absolutely incredible. Taking [Cross] into Africa is a masterstroke. The story is unrelentingly exciting.

—— The Simon Mayo show, BBC Radio 5 Live

Psychologically acute and extremely disturbing, Ruth Rendell's work is outstanding

—— The Times

Rendell has a Dickensian empathy, informed by a prodigious love of London life. Her account, bursting with colour and vitality, is a treat to read

—— The Independent

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