Amazon.com Review
Christopher Reich Reviews The Fear Index 
Is there a genre of fiction that Robert Harris has not mastered? His first novel, Fatherland, set in a triumphant Germany’s post-World War II Berlin (yes, triumphant!) ranks as one of the finest “what if?” stories ever written. Pompeii sends us farther back in time, to the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius only days before the volcano was set to erupt. Ancient Rome at its pulpiest. Who knew aqueducts could be so sexy? The Ghost Writer (winner of the 2008 International Thriller Writers award for Best Novel) claims the shadowy world of contemporary North Atlantic politics as its subject. Classy Brit espionage best enjoyed with a gin and tonic in hand. All were international bestsellers. All were page-turners non-pareil. But best, all were frighteningly intelligent. Thrillers that made you think as you maddeningly bit your nails.
With The Fear Index, Mr. Harris has turned his gimlet eye on the secret world of billion dollar hedge funds, namely those that seek to earn profits by computer driven program trading. The result is a wholly unique entertainment: a strange, compelling, and utterly propulsive novel. I’m not sure who would enjoy it more: George Soros, Arthur C. Clarke or Edgar Allen Poe.
The story takes place over a tumultuous twenty-four hour period in the life of Dr. Alexander Hoffmann, computer scientist, mathematical genius, and, of late, hedge fund billionaire. It begins (as a fine thriller should) on a dark and stormy night when Hoffmann is awoken by an intruder inside his sixty million dollar villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. A confrontation occurs, Hoffmann is injured, and in his attempt to solve just how someone was able to gain entry into his well-guarded palace, Hoffmann comes face to face with the greatest danger he can imagine: himself. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say: his intellect. To reveal more would ruin the adventure...and adventure it is.
There is, however, a backstory. Hoffmann was not always a stock trader. He began his career as a computer scientist at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) where his work in artificial intelligence involved modeling sophisticated algorithms that programmed computers to teach themselves. It is this mastery of algorithms, and how they train computers to mimic human behavior, that he has turned to such profitable use at Hoffmann Investment Technologies. And it is this mastery that will come to haunt him.
What Harris does so admirably--in my mind, better than any other writing today--is intertwine nifty, page turning plots with important historical, political, or in this case, sociological questions. The late Michael Crichton did this kind of story well. In The Fear Index, Robert Harris does it fantastically.
Review
“Chilling . . . Harris has shown himself a master of the thriller form . . . The principal narrative unfolds at a breakneck pace . . . Readers may find themselves lying awake at night unsettled by the story.”
—Wall Street Journal “In this taut thriller, Harris delivers a superbly entertaining read for our time.”
—Newsweek
“Addictive . . . Pick this up on an airplane, and you won't want to land . . . The greatest pleasure is that it gets the finance
right.”
—Reuters
“Harris is a master of pacing—the story moves swiftly while never feeling rushed, and the tension increases subtly chapter by chapter.”
—Bloomberg News “Timely, expertly executed . . . Foreboding runs through the system of the book like an IV drip . . . It doesn’t take a super-computer to know
The Fear Index is a worthwhile investment of your time.”
—USA Today “Fleet-footed . . . Harris expertly conjures a paranoid world where everyone seems to be watching everyone else.”
—New York Times
“Harris has fashioned in
The Fear Index a thriller that’s part Kafka, part Orwell, part Darwin—with just about all parts exciting and pertinent . . . The tale [comes] to a stunning and disturbing finish.”
—San Francisco Chronicle“Unputdownable
. . . Harris has achieved the impossible, or at least the improbable: an explanation of the extravagantly esoteric nature of hedge funds, which normal people can understand . . . I gorged myself, devouring his dystopian vision of free markets enslaved by a sinister artificial intelligence in one breakneck sitting.”
—The Daily Telegraph
“Reminiscent of everyone from Michael Crichton to Ian Fleming, Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock.”
—Financial Times
“A virtuoso specimen . . . Inventively exploiting current anxieties about algorithmic trading to update the Frankenstein story,
The Fear Index is both cutting edge and keenly conscious of its literary predecessors . . . A tour de force.”
—The Sunday Times
“A blazingly ambitious novel . . . A fictional nightmare that feels like a wake-up call.”
—The Sunday Telegraph
“An escapist thriller to rank with the best of them, and as a guide to what hedge funds actually do, it is surprisingly clear and instructive.”
—The Economist
“Ingenious . . . There aren’t many writers who can produce genuine page-turners these days but Harris is one and
The Fear Index had me gripped from the start . . . The characters are superb . . . Harris is stunningly good at explaining complex financial instruments in layman’s terms.”
—Sunday Express “Harris’s great skill is to inhabit fully and convincingly the worlds he writes about, showing off his vast research yet never allowing the white-knuckle narrative to lose momentum.”
—New Statesman “As gripping a tale as anything Harris has written . . . It crackles with energy and invention, and the author’s obviously extensive research into the arcane world of state-of-the-art computing technology, algorithms, trading and hedge funds is dished up lightly and intelligibly.”
—Irish Independent “Another winner . . . What makes Harris’s thrillers so much more rewarding than those of his rivals is that they all, whatever their ostensible subject, come out of his deep and expert interest in power.”
—The Evening Standard “Harris is a master of pace and entertainment.”
—The Observer (UK)
