Investor tale has currency

The Fear Index is a well-known measure of stock market volatility in the United States, measuring as it does the market perception of how stocks will play out in any given circumstances.

In recent years, as the global economy has been gripped by fear and recession, the VIX, as the index is known, has been closely watched to indicate the next steps in either a recovery or a plunge further into a cash crisis.

Robert Harris plays on those sharemarket fears in his new book by the same name, The Fear Index (Cornerstone), placing just enough real-life details in the book to give it currency as Europe and the United States still face an uphill struggle to sort out their economies.

Dr Alex Hoffman, who started as a boy genius and has now graduated into a computer scientist nearly no-one knows about, envisioned building a machine to capture the fears and euphoria of investors, clipping the ticket on the way through in accumulating billions of dollars for himself, his erstwhile business partner, employees and the investors.

So far, the machine has been well ahead of the market and rich investors have flown in from around the world for the next injection of cash. Suddenly, an unsettling feeling of nervousness goes through the tightly-secured broking house as the machine starts making its own decisions.

The book has some silly parts but they only seem that way because they are so believable.

Never rule out anything when it comes to making money. The pages before the ending are a bit far-fetched but the actual ending is a gem.

• Recently, every book coming out of Sweden - and there are plenty of them - make a claim of being better than Stieg Larsson's trilogy; a claim that is annoying when really Larsson's success has paved the way for previously untranslated authors to make it on to the shelves of a much wider readership.

Midwinter Sacrifice, by Mons Kallentoft (Hodder & Stoughton), makes such a claim. The book is recommended by this reviewer and it stands on its own. A close-knit family in a small village has a few secrets it protects with all its power.

Unknown to the children of the family, their matriarchal mother has a few more secrets of her own.

A body is found hanging in the wood. No-one can identify it immediately, but Malin Fors, the detective first on the scene, relies on her own instincts to resolve the crime.

The darkness of this book makes it compelling reading. You get involved in family life, good and bad, of the characters and readers will probably take sides as the book progresses.

• The book I left last to read was not as it seemed. Bad Signs by R. J. Ellory (Orion) is a struggle between two half-brothers who are orphaned early in their lives by a violent act against their mother.

Simply put, the book is a good brother against a bad brother, and a case of mistaken identity by authorities over which is the bad brother.

Do not read this book without a strong constitution. It has plenty of things to disgust most people, including rape, shooting, senseless acts of violence - brother against brother, brothers against the authorities and a dark cloud that seems to be part of everyone in a 1960s America. It's a harsh book to read.

 - Dene Mackenzie is the Business editor of the Otago Daily Times.