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Ken Follett

Paper Money Kindle Edition

by Ken Follett (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Three seemingly unrelated events occur on a single morning in London. An MP wakes up after spending the night with a beautiful young woman. A tycoon meets a leading Bank of England official for breakfast. And an underworld gang boss briefs his crew.

Nothing so far to keep the tabloid editors awake. Until ambitious young reporter Kevin Hart uncovers his first promising link . . .

What he begins to uncover is conspiracy; conspiracy to defraud, whatever the human cost. On one unforgettable day in the capital, fortunes will be destroyed and ideals will be shattered by the discovery that the whole truth is too dangerous to print.

Print length

217 pages
Language

English
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Publisher

Macmillan
Publication date

May 1, 1996
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18 years and up
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1322 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

It was the luckiest night of Tim Fitzpeterson's life.

He thought this the moment he opened his eyes and saw the girl, in bed beside him, still sleeping. He did not move, for fear of waking her; but he looked at her, almost furtively, in the cold light of the London dawn. She slept flat on her back, with the absolute relaxation of small children. Tim was reminded of his own Adrienne when she was little. He put the unwelcome thought out of his mind.

The girl beside him had red hair, fitting her small head like a cap, showing her tiny ears. All her features were small: nose, chin, cheekbones, dainty teeth. Once, in the night, he had covered her face with his broad, clumsy hands, pressing his fingers gently into the hollows of her eyes and her cheeks, opening her soft lips with his thumbs, as if his skin could feel her beauty like the heat from a fire.

Her left arm lay limply outside the coverlet, which was pushed down to reveal narrow, delicate shoulders and one shallow breast, its nipple soft in slumber.

They lay apart, not quite touching, although he could feel the warmth of her thigh close to his. He looked away from her, up at the ceiling, and for a moment he let the sheer joy of remembered fornication wash over him like a physical thrill; then he got up.

He stood beside the bed and looked back at her. She was undisturbed. The candid morning light made her no less lovely, despite tousled hair and the untidy remains of what had been elaborate makeup. Daybreak was less kind to Tim Fitzpeterson, he knew. That was why he tried not to wake her: he wanted to look in a mirror before she saw him.

He went naked, padding across the dull green living-room carpet to the bathroom. In the space of a few moments he saw the place as if for the first time, and found it hopelessly unexciting. The carpet was matched by an even duller green sofa, with fading flowered cushions. There were a plain wooden desk, of the kind to be found in a million offices; an elderly black-and-white television set; a filing cabinet; and a bookshelf of legal and economic textbooks plus several volumes of Hansard. He had once thought it so dashing to have a London pied-ˆ-terre.

The bathroom had a full-length mirror-bought not by Tim, but by his wife, in the days before she had totally retired from town life. He looked in it while he waited for the bath to fill, wondering what there was about this middle-aged body that could drive a beautiful girl of-what, twenty-five?-into a frenzy of lust. He was healthy, but not fit, not in the sense with which that word is used to describe men who do exercises and visit gymnasia. He was short, and his naturally broad frame was thickened by a little superfluous fat, particularly on the chest, waist, and buttocks. His physique was okay, for a man of forty-one, but it was nothing to excite even the most physical of women.

The mirror became obscured by steam, and Tim got into the bath. He rested his head and closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he had had less than two hours of sleep, yet he felt quite fresh. His upbringing would have him believe that pain and discomfort, if not actual illness, were the consequences of late nights, dancing, adultery, and strong drink. All those sins together ought to bring down the wrath of God.

No: the wages of sin were sheer delight. He began to soap himself languidly. It had started at one of those appalling dinners: grapefruit cocktail, overdone steak and bombe no surprise for three hundred members of a useless organization. Tim's speech had been just another exposition of the Government's current strategy, emotionally weighted to appeal to the particular sympathies of the audience. Afterwards he had agreed to go somewhere else for a drink with one of his colleagues-a brilliant young economist-and two faintly interesting people from the audience.

The venue turned out to be a nightclub which would normally have been beyond Tim's means; but someone else had paid the entrance. Once inside, he began to enjoy himself, so much so that he bought a bottle of champagne with his credit card. More people had joined their group: a film company executive Tim had vaguely heard of; a playwright he hadn't; a left-wing economist who shook hands with a wry smile and avoided shoptalk; and the girls.

The champagne and the floor show inflamed him slightly. In the old days, he would at this point have taken Julia home and made love to her roughly-she liked that, just occasionally. But now she no longer came to town, and he no longer went to nightclubs, not normally.

The girls had not been introduced. Tim started to talk to the nearest, a flat-chested redhead in a long dress of some pale color. She looked like a model, and said she was an actress. He expected that he would find her boring, and that she would reciprocate. That was when he got the first intimation that tonight would be special: she seemed to find him fascinating.

Their close conversation gradually isolated them from the rest of the party, until someone suggested another club. Tim immediately said he would go home. The redhead caught his arm and asked him not to; and Tim, who was being gallant to a beautiful woman for the first time in twenty years, instantly agreed to go along.

He wondered, as he got out of the bath, what they had talked about for so long. The work of a Junior Minister in the Department of Energy was hardly cocktail-party conversation: when it was not technical, it was highly confidential. Perhaps they had discussed politics. Had he told wry anecdotes about senior politicians, in the deadpan tone which was his only way of being humorous? He could not remember. All he could recall was the way she had sat, with every part of her body angled devotedly toward him: head, shoulders, knees, feet-a physical attitude that was at once intimate and teasing.

He wiped steam off the shaving mirror and rubbed his chin speculatively, sizing up the task. He had very dark hair, and his beard, if he were to grow it, would be thick. The rest of his face was, to say the least, ordinary. The chin was receding, the nose sharply pointed with twin white marks either side of the bridge where spectacles had rested for thirty-five years, the mouth not small but a little grim, the ears too large, the forehead intellectually high. No character could be read there. It was a face trained to conceal thoughts, instead of displaying emotion.

He switched on the shaver and grimaced to bring all of his left cheek into view. He was not even ugly. Some girls had a thing about ugly men, he had heard-he was in no position to verify such generalizations about women-but Tim Fitzpeterson did not even fit into that dubiously fortunate category.

But perhaps it was time to think again about the categories he fitted into. The second club they had visited had been the kind of place he would never knowingly have entered. He was no music lover, and if he had liked it his taste would not have included the blaring, insistent row which drowned conversation in The Black Hole. Nevertheless, he had danced to it-the jerky, exhibitionist dancing that seemed to be de rigueur there. He enjoyed it, and thought he acquitted himself well enough; there were no amused glances from the other patrons, as he feared there might be. Perhaps that was because many of them were his age.

The disc jockey, a bearded young man in a T-shirt improbably printed with the words harvard business school, capriciously played a slow ballad, sung by an American with a heavy cold. They were on the small dance floor at the time. The girl came close to him and wound her arms around him. Then he knew she meant it; and he had to decide whether he was equally serious. With her hot, lithe body clinging to him as closely as a wet towel, he made up his mind very quickly. He bent his head-she was slightly shorter than he-and murmured into her ear: "Come and have a drink at my flat."

He kissed her in the taxi-there was something he had not done for many years! The kiss was so luscious, like a kiss in a dream, that he touched her breasts, wonderfully small and hard under the loose gown; and after that they found it difficult to restrain themselves until they reached home.

The token drink was forgotten. We must have got into bed in less than a minute, Tim thought smugly. He finished shaving and looked around for cologne. There was an old bottle in the wall cabinet.

He went back to the bedroom. She was still asleep. He found his dressing gown and cigarettes and sat in the upright chair by the window. I was pretty terrific in bed, he thought. He knew he was kidding himself: she had been the activist, the creative one. On her initiative they had done things which Tim could not suggest to Julia after fifteen years in the same bed.

Yes, Julia. He gazed unseeing from the first-floor window, across the narrow street to the redbrick Victorian school, its meager playground painted with the fading yellow lines of a netball court. He still felt the same about Julia: if he had loved her before, he loved her now. This girl was different. But wasn't that what fools always told themselves before embarking on an affair?

Let's not be hasty, he told himself. For her this might be a one-night stand. He could not assume she would want to see him again. Yet he wanted to decide where his aims lay before asking her what the options were: government had taught him to brief himself before meetings.

He had a formula for the approach to complex issues. First, what have I got to lose?

Julia, again: plump, intelligent, contented, her horizons contracting inexorably with every year of motherhood. There had been a time when he lived for her: he bought the clothes she liked, he read novels because she was interested in novels, and his political successes pleased him all the more because they pleased her. But the center of gravity of his life had shifted. Now Julia held sway only over trivia. She wanted to live in Hampshire, and it did not matter to him, so they lived there. She wanted him to wear check jackets, but Westminster chic demanded sober suits, so he wore dark, faintly patterned grays and navy blues.

When he analyzed his feelings, he found there was not a lot to tie him to Julia. A little sentiment, perhaps-a nostalgic picture of her, with her hair in a ponytail, doing the jive in a tapered skirt. Was that love or something? He doubted it.

The girls? That was something else. Katie, Penny and Adrienne: only Katie was old enough to understand love and marriage. They did not see much of him, but he took the view that a little father-love goes a long way, and is a great deal better than no father at all. There was no room for debate there: his opinion was fixed.

And there was his career. A divorce might not harm a Junior Minister, but it could ruin a man higher up. There had never been a divorced Prime Minister. Tim Fitzpeterson wanted that job.

So there was a lot to lose-in fact, all he held dear. He turned his gaze from the window to the bed. The girl had rolled onto her side, facing away. She was right to have her hair short-it emphasized the slender neck and pretty shoulders. Her back tapered sharply to a small waist, then disappeared beneath a crumpled sheet. Her skin was faintly tanned.

There was so much to gain. "Joy" was a word Tim had little use for, but it entered his thoughts now. If he had known joy before, he could not remember when. Satisfaction, yes: in the writing of a sound, comprehensive report; in the winning of one of those countless small battles in committees and in the House of Commons; in a book that was correct or a wine that was right. But the savagely chemical pleasure he had with this girl was new.

There: those were the pros and cons. The formula said, now add them up and see which is greater. But this time the formula would not work. Tim had acquaintances who said it never did. Perhaps they were right. It might be a mistake to think that reasons could be counted like pound notes: he was reminded, curiously, of a phrase from a college philosophy lecture, "the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language." Which is longer-an airplane or a one-act play? Which do I prefer-satisfaction or joy? His thinking was getting woolly. He made a disgusted noise, then looked quickly at the bed to see whether he had disturbed her. She slept on. Good.

Out in the street, a gray Rolls-Royce pulled up at the curb a hundred yards away. Nobody got out. Tim looked more closely, and saw the driver open a newspaper. A chauffeur, perhaps, picking someone up at six thirty? A businessman who had traveled overnight and arrived too early? Tim could not read the license plate. But he could see that the driver was a big man, big enough to make the interior of the car seem as cramped as a Mini.

He turned his mind back to his dilemma. What do we do in politics, he thought, when we face two forceful but conflicting demands? The answer came immediately: we choose a course of action which, really or apparently, meets both needs. The parallel was obvious. He would stay married to Julia and have an affair with this girl. It seemed a very political solution, and it pleased him.

He lit another cigarette and thought about the future. It was a pleasant pastime. There would be many more nights here at the flat; the occasional weekend in a small hotel in the country; perhaps even a fortnight in the sun, on some discreet little beach in North Africa or the West Indies. She would be sensational in a bikini.

Other hopes paled beside these. He was tempted by the thought that his early life had been wasted; but he knew the idea to be extravagant. Not wasted, then; but it was as if he had spent his youth working out long-division sums and never discovered differential calculus. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Originally published under the pseudonym Zachary Stone, this is a happily rediscovered suspense thriller written in the mid-'70s by Follett, the bestselling author of Lie Down with Lions. Its plot, set in London, and intended to show that crime, high finance and journalism are corruptly interconnected, is, according to Follett, the cleverest he has ever devised. The fast-paced action spans, in hour-to-hour fashion, one day in the life of an evening newspaper and features an adulterous politician, a corrupt financier, a criminal gang, a mentally retarded youth and an eager cub reporter, their linked destinies all moving toward a singleand intensely excitingclimax. Though painted in broad brushstrokes, the characters seem compellingly real, as do their professional environments. Follett can proudly acknowledge this one.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B005LUJVSQ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Macmillan; Reprints edition (May 1, 1996)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 1, 1996
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1322 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 217 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #559,786 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,213 in Political Thrillers & Suspense
- #2,633 in Espionage Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- #5,150 in Espionage Thrillers (Books)

Customer Reviews:
6,019 ratings

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Ken Follett

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Ken Follett was only twenty-seven when he wrote the award-winning EYE OF THE NEEDLE, which became an international bestseller. His celebrated PILLARS OF THE EARTH was voted into the top 100 of Britain's best-loved books in the BBC's the Big Read and the sequel, WORLD WITHOUT END, was published to critical acclaim. He lives with his family in London and Hertfordshire.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5

6,019 global ratings

5 star		32%
4 star		28%
3 star		23%
2 star		11%
1 star		7%

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lindy

Good plot

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 6, 2023

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This was apparently a Ken Follett failure but it is a very intriguing book with a carefully woven plot. All of the story takes place in less than 24 hours. There is no main character but instead a string of them who interact in a complex plot. In this short book, the characters are well developed, the p!it moves at a tight pace, and it is a very good read.

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Lyle Wichman

one day and the huge effect on many lives

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on August 14, 2022

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Very different from what I thought. The games and tricks the wealthy and the not so wealthy get away with. And the price so many pay. As always Follett is an excellent writer. The characters are fantastic. The ending has a few surprises, some not so good.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 20, 2022

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This book seemed somewhat disorganized, and it was not among Follett’s best work. The story seemed forced, and the resolution did not really resolve anything. I would not want to read this one again.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 25, 2009

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This review is for the New American Library (Division of Penguin) paperback edition, October 1987, 261 pages. PAPER MONEY did not make the USA Today's Top 150 Best-Selling books list, which has tracked book sales since October 1993. Ken Follett has ten novels on this best-seller list.

Tim Fitzpeterson is a politician. Felix Laski is a corporate raider preying on the weak. Arthur Cole is deputy news editor at the Evening Post. Tony Cox runs a gang of thieves. Derek Hamilton owns the controlling interest in a conglomerate that is in trouble. One day in London, these five men unwittingly fall into the same pot of soup. They stew from six in the morning until near five in the evening. There is no recipe, no chef either, and without someone to stir the brew, some of the ingredients will burn. No one knows until Ken Follett finishes cooking.

In the introduction, Ken Follett wrote, "The plot of PAPER MONEY is the cleverest I have ever devised..." and that the novel "...is the best of my unsuccessful books." The plot is intricate. The structure of the novel without a protagonist and divided into the hour-by-hour evolving collision is clever. Overall, it's a good read.

3 people found this helpful

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john mackel

Fascinating clever

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 20, 2012

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I found this book a very easy and enjoyable read. There is no main character but the story holds your interest or at least it did mine. There are characters in this story that could be construed as bad guys but that would be like stating a wolf is a bad guy and a deer is good guy. Follett is a master of taking attributes that reside in men like greed, ego and lust and matching then against what some would consider weak or less than aggresive counterparts. This is not to say the less than aggressive are stupid, they are not, it is just their life is not dedicated to preying on others. I liked this book because it was a good story, it held my attention and it entertained me. The only reason I didn't give it a 5 star rating is because most of Follett's other books are better. It's not fanasty, it's not historical, it's not about a hero in shining armor, it's about today and wicked scheming people. I recommend this book as a good E&E (escape and evasion) read.

7 people found this helpful

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david adam

nothing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 9, 2022

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What a let down at the end. Not one of Follett’s best. Too many characters to follow. When you finally get everyone straight, he just ends the book.

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Equatorial

ambition is a messy affair

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 10, 2022

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And so is this tough-minded novel. Loved the story arc, the settings in London and the bizzare cast of characters.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 3, 2022

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Great book by Ken Follet. Little disappointing in the ending although the writing from front to back is brilliant. Great read.

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Top reviews from other countries

R U sitting comfortably

A compelling storyline

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 16, 2018

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In his intro to this book Follett describes it as the best of his failures and I suppose an author must judge success in terms of copies sold. I can see how this works and yet I cannot understand why it should be unsuccessful. For myself I found the plot and style of story to be refreshingly different and yet recognisable as a Follett. To all those readers who have yet to pick up this book I say, what are you waiting for, you are missing a great read. So go on give it a try.

20 people found this helpful

Blah de Blah de Blah

Really enjoyed it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 16, 2021

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Somewhere in the foreword the author explains that this was the book he wrote prior to his break-out novel, 'Eye of the Needle'. He stated that he realized that there were too many character convolutions and that confused readers, so he simplified things and then scored with 'Eye'.

Well, maybe I'm different but I had no issue with the characters in 'Paper Money' and frankly was thoroughly enjoying it. I mean, just read 'The Stand' by Stephen King or Tom Clancy's 'The Sum of All Fears' - these are monsters with multiple characters, and by the way, monster sellers. Ken Follett took me right back to the broiling summer of 1976 (I remember it), big-bummed girls in tight white jeans, unions, public schoolboy bankers, East End hoodlums with their rhyming slang and more; given the author is Welsh, he got that just right. Loved it.

So why 4* and not 5*? Well, I was roaring along and at one point glanced bottom left on my kindle expecting to see something like '50% 250 of 500', but what I read was '85% 255 of 285' - what?! Nearly finished the book? And I had. Okay, so he landed the ending quite neatly, but it could be filled out more with actual Cop characters, they chasing down the gang with the evidence, who'd gone for Tony's mother, how the newspaper would try to get the story out even so, what became of Felix and so on. It just felt cut short. But as an expose of all the characters and styles of London in 1976, it was wonderful.

One person found this helpful

Mandrek Larl

"Paper Money" may not be prime Follett but it's worth a read ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 7, 2021

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Let's start with a warning: this is an early Follett and if you're here looking for a long complex historical narrative then you're in the wrong place, but we all have to start somewhere.

Like its companion "The Modigliani Scandal" Follett wrote "Paper Money" at a time before he'd hit his stride as an author and both books were published under the pseudonym Zachary Stone, but in my opinion "Paper Money" is the better of the two. It may be quite short, and in truth it feels quite dated now but it's a quick and easy read that's lacking in complexity and without any unnecessary character development as Follett tells the story of an eventful twelve hours in London as seen from an evening newspaper's newsroom. This is undeniably a Follett and in it's own way it's both fun and a bit of a morality tale as the principal nasty guys get their comeuppance. No spoilers here, but in true Follett style the story follows a number of seemingly unrelated threads that when pulled come together in a network of ambition, adultery, blackmail, robbery, fraud, and murder (and that's just for starters).

If you like Follett then do yourself a favour and give "Paper Money" a go; if nothing else it's a quick, easy and fun read and that's why it's five stars.

One person found this helpful

Al

Brings back the memories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 2, 2019

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Set in the early 1970s, this novel brings back many memories of the times: asset stripping; insider trading; long firm fraud; conglomerates as the stars of business world; bent coppers; nasty, casual racism; maltreatment of the mentally disadvantaged, often by way of cruel jokes; vicious crime gangs and so on - those were the days, eh?
A junior Government Minister (corrupted after being caught in a honey trap); a crime gang boss (modelled on the Krays) and the mentally disadvantaged son of one of his mob; a freewheeling, asset stripping, insider trading, dodgy businessman (could be modelled on any number of folk from the era); the head of and principal shareholder in an ailing mini conglomerate and his wife; and a couple of newspaper journalists (one, a jaded, worn out, deputy editor, and the other, a pushy, young reporter), all interact, in a single day, in a crime caper which leads to a sort of redemption for a couple of them and comeuppance, in unexpected ways, for some of the others.
Not great writing but the plot holds together (with the aid of quite a bit of contrivance) and moves along well, to make for a fairly short, enjoyable (if you can put up with the nasty bits from the times), easy read.

3 people found this helpful

John

Dated thriller that is not that thrilling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 4, 2019

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The lives of three random, ostensibly unconnected people are dragged together in this late 70’s story – an MP, a millionaire businessman and a London gangster. Written when newspapers and radio were the main news sources for the majority, the story is anchored by the newsroom editor of a paper desperate to find something to put on the front page on a slow news day. The strands of the separate stories are slowly picked up via tips to the paper from various sources, and gradually is pulled together to its conclusion.

I found this quite slow and not that thrilling. It is clearly of its time, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but to me the story never really got going. The gangland heist seemed to be in slow motion, the millionaire businessman a bit of a caricature. The ending seemed rather quick and forced - there is no real conclusion, just lots of loose ends that nowadays would seem like an obvious hook for a second in the series.

Overall something of a disappointment given the good reviews.

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