Customer Reviews

The Silent Oligarch

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Former journalist Benjamin Webster works as an investigator for Ikerru, an international corporate intelligence firm that delves deep into the business affairs of powerful people and their finances and exposes their secrets for its paying clients. When the wealthy Aristotle Tourna, an entrepreneur with the reputation for being both ruthless and sleazy wants to hire Ikerru, Webster evaluates the offer with reluctance and cynicism until Tourna explains he will pay the firm to bring down Konstantin Malin, a Russian bureaucrat whom many suspect is one of the richest, most powerful people in his country. For years, Webster has been haunted by the murder of Inessa, a fellow journalist who wrote about corruption in Russian. Webster has long suspected that Malin was behind Inessa's death. He is eager to take on this assignment.

It is not easy, however, to connect Malin to much of anything outside of his mundane job. The best option for doing so seems to be to convince Richard Lock, who appears to be Malin's front man, to turn on his master. Lock has become wealthy heading and manipulating the corporations Malin is believed to control behind the scenes. But Lock's association with the Russian has also cost him. It has cost him his wife and daughter, his independence, and his reputation. His days are kept busy being briefed by lawyers to defend himself and the corporation for which he is the major shareholder against the accusations of fraud Tourna has made in a suit. Law enforcement and financial watchdog agencies in several countries are also focusing attention on Lock and obviously bent on tying him to money laundering. Lock is quickly losing his taste for life in Russia, for being a figurehead, and for Malin -- particularly when bad things begin to happen to others associated with the Russian.

Chris Morgan Jones' "The Silent Oligarch" gives readers a glimpse of the corporate morass and power base in present day Russia, although like Russia itself, exact details remain mysterious and obscure, not only to readers, but also to many of the characters. It is indeed a spy story and a thriller, but one that is more characterized by intellect and personal agonizing on the part of Lock and Webster than of fast-paced, non-stop action.

In approximately the first third of the novel, Jones sets up the scenario, and this section of the novel may seem to progress slowly to some readers. It takes careful reading to pick up on the structure and relationships of the corporate world set out in the novel and the minor characters. But Jones accelerates both the action and the tension in the last two-thirds of the book, with the climax and reveal coming quickly and with the ending offering a major surprise. It is, as some early reviews indicate, more of a LeCarré thriller (or Furst) than a Ludlum.

I had my doubts when I first began to read "The Silent Oligarch", but by the end of the book, I was hoping to see more from Jones.

The author wrote a lot but said too little. Within the first dozen pages I was bored. After 100, I gave up. There were entirely too many characters to keep track of, even if a reader is interested in them all, the story itself is so dull and slow moving that you'll give up caring for even the main characters. Worse still, quickly introducing new characters only to have them suddenly disappear because they're killed or simply can't help the main character means there is that much less room to create a relationship between the reader and the main character himself. One could skip paragraphs or even entire pages and the plot would stand dead still, you'd be missing nothing. Additionally, too often the author is bogged down in minute details that matter little, descriptions that fail to enhance anything, and back stories that are a waste of time. Give this one a pass.

I enjoyed the novel as an intelligent thriller which got along just fine without bombs bursting and cars chasing. The action got twisted as it moved to Berlin, and I didn't like the resolution of things. The author had smartly created the story but didn't seem to have a smart way to end it, at least in my opinon.

I ordered this book through Amazon Vine mainly because the "teaser" written about it piqued my interest. I've been employed in the financial services world for thirty years(just retired thank you very much) and was hoping for a more in-depth view of what happens in the shadowy business world of the Eastern Bloc. Everyone sees the term 'oligarch' thrown about but no one has done much of an expose on who they are and what exactly it is that they do. Unfortunately this fast moving thriller of a story did nothing to enlighten me or probably anyone else. Pretty much everyone knows that politics, graft and corruption all run rampant in the former Soviet Union countries.

Take your pick on who the 'silent oligarch' really was in this book. Was it Richard, the lawyer/front man who was responsible for the implementation of the daily dealings that kept this shadow empire operating? Was it Malin, who appeared to orchestrate everything but had no assets legally tied to his name? Or was it someone higher up, probably in the Kremlin, who wasn't named at all and yet pulled all the strings throughout the story?

A good first effort and a good read, but I would have liked a more definitive ending.

In case you don't know what an oligarch is (I didn't either) here is info from the Oxford dictionary:

"If it's true that money is power, then oligarch is the perfect name for the new breed of ultra-rich businessmen. Originally, an oligarch was one of a very small group of leaders of a country. Most of today's oligarchs gained their fortunes very quickly after the fall of the former Soviet Union."

The oligarchs in Russia suddenly emerged sort of like Athena out of the head of Zeus. The time was ripe for entrepreneurs who took advantage of Russia's transformation from Communism to a democracy. During the 1990s, when Boris Yeltsin was elected, opportunistic entrepreneurs established world - wide and highly lucrative connections to the corrupt government. This golden opportunity for amassing huge wealth is the scenario for this suspenseful and exciting book.

There are four major and pivotal players in the book. One: Konstatin Malin, the Oligarch. Two: Benedict Webster the London based lawyer in an international intelligence firm called Ikeru, who is out to bring down Malin and his corrupt enterprises. Webster has an ulterior motive since he is sure Malin had arranged the murder of his fellow journalist, Inessa, ten years before. Three: Richard Lock, very wealthy himself, a money launderer who manipulates corporations, fuelling Malin with money while the "invisible oligarch" controls operations behind the scenes. The fourth man is Aristotle Tourna, a Greek who is wealthy himself but appears rather slippery. He will pay Ikeru to topple Malin the Oligarch.

Richard Lock is the most vulnerable member of the money laundering syndicate but he is the most important front for Malin. His Russian wife and their daughter have moved from Russia to London and he finds Moscow desolate without them. Lock is constantly having to defend himself against allegations of fraud. He has lost his independence and his reputation. Recognizing Lock is the weakest link in the vast money laundering schemes, the hounds--Webster and Tourna and their collaborators-pursue the fox- Lock. The hounds want the fox to turn on his oligarch master.

This is an exciting book that grabs you and propels you around the world from Russia to Greece to Turkey to the US to London to Monaco to Paris to the Cayman Islands. Many Russian cities involved are so obscure a map would be helpful. The prose is taut, the pace fast and the novel is interesting and authentic and appears to hover quite close to the truth.

While dressed up to look like an international thriller, at heart this is a book about gang warfare. Not the Al Capone type of shoot-em-up, but the more modern version. Where everyone is unfailingly polite even while people turn up dead, and everything is done by proxies.

One gang, fronted by a detective agency, wants to expose the other's criminal dealings, and put them out of business. The other gang, fronted by the puppet who heads their businesses, lays a smoke screen while the puppet considers whether it's time to get away and get his old life back.

Many thrillers start a bit slow while the author paints a detailed landscape, lays clues and red herrings, and breathes life into the characters. This book starts slow ... painfully slow ... glacially slow ... molasses on dry ice kind of slow. And that's precisely where it stays for the first 250 of its 310 pages. In equal parts mind-numbingly boring and dreary, it is utterly devoid of redeeming value. Pages are spent describing locales in pointless detail, and conversations are stilted and often resolve nothing. There is no humour, not even a spec of the classic British drollness, nor any cleverness, nor any sympathetic characters for us to care for.

My best description of this book comes from a quote by Lock, the puppet: "No, it was nothing really. In the end. Nothing."

I tried to finish this book. The writing style is tiresome and the plot continues to get set but the action is slow in coming. At 75 pages, I read these reviews before putting the book aside and was encouraged to continue to finish it. At 143 pages, I gave up because it was tedious and difficult to read. Maybe it's a good first effort for the author but the pace needs to be picked up.

I have read more than 20 books in the past 3 months and this was the only one I put aside and didn't finish.

Chris Morgan Jones clearly understands the disparate worlds that make up the universe of his debut novel, "The Silent Oligarch." He has worked in business intelligence, and has served as an adviser to governments in the Middle East, Russian oligarchs, New York banks and London hedge funds. He draws on his insider's knowledge of all of these realms to craft a well-told saga of the efforts to take down a Russian oligarch who sits as a minister in the Kremlin and is skimming billions into his own off-shore coffers. The complex dance that takes place between the oligarch and his minions and the investigative team that seek to take expose and ruin him is a beautifully choreographed bloody ballet worth of the Kirov or Bolshoi. The oligarch, a rival business tycoon who is suing him, a London lawyer and a cynical investigative journalist serve as the four cornerstones of the plot that careens from Russia to Monte Carlo to London.

The plot is complex and very plausible; the major elements could be found in the headlines of any of today's best newspapers. The writing is crisp, the characters are well drawn and nicely developed. I thoroughly enjoy this novel and look forward to more from the pen of this talented writer.

I wanted to enjoy this book, but it did not meet my expectations. Insight into the moral and ethical dilemmas facing perpetrators and investigators. But for me there was no pay off. It seemed like an interesting premise, however, the story did not offer me much insight into the world of corporate espionage.

The comparison to John le Carré is a bit of a stretch. I love le Carré's novels and especially how all of the characters are believable as being real people. I was very excited to get this book in the hopes that it would be along these same lines. The first few chapters left me feeling like I was reading one of Flemming's James Bond novels and not one of le Carré's. Needless to say, the characters were not terribly believable as being real.

That disappoint aside, this is a good book that left me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what was going to happen next and how the story fit together. I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and am giving it only four stars because of the lack of believability of some of the characters.