Product Description

A job he shouldn't have taken... A woman he shouldn't have loved... A secret he shouldn't expose...if he wants to live.

Nick Neumann had it all: a Harvard degree, a beautiful fiancée, a star-making Wall Street career. But behind the dazzling veneer of this golden boy is a man haunted by the brutal killing of his father seventeen years before.

Now chilling new evidence has implicated his father's employer, the United Swiss Bank, in the crime. Nick doesn't know how. Or why. But he has a plan to find out: move to Zurich. Work for the same bank. Follow in his father's footsteps. Look for the same secrets...and uncover something so shocking, so unexpected, justice may not be enough.

For as a circle of treachery tightens around him, as a woman with secrets of her own enters his life, Nick makes another chilling discovery. Not just about his father but about himself. And how far he's willing to go to find out what happened seventeen years before--when a man died and a conspiracy was born.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28799 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-01
• Released on: 1998-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 768 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780440225294
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Through the eyes of Christopher Reich, dive into the corrupt world of international high finance. In his debut novel, Reich offers a realistic and gritty "day-in-the-life" perspective on working in the world's financial mecca. For Nick Neumann, an ex-marine turned Harvard MBA with a gorgeous fiancée and an elite position at Morgan Stanley, life is good--until his mother's untimely death opens old wounds and rehashes questions regarding his father's unsolved murder. Nick wants the truth and is willing to sacrifice his career, love, and future for a crack at untangling the mystery surrounding his father's death. To do this, he takes a job at the prestigious United Swiss Bank, the venerable financial cornerstone of Geneva and his father's former employer. Before he can begin his investigation, however, disturbing events come into play: One portfolio manager is dead, another had a "nervous breakdown," and his training manager is jumping ship to cast accounts with their staunch enemy. All of the managers have one thing in common: they each oversaw a multimillion-dollar numbered account owned by the mysterious Pasha. If that isn't enough, the DEA steps in and orders Nick to serve up Pasha on a silver platter. Being the embodiment of American ideals, Nick takes matters into his own hands and is caught in a ruthless conspiracy that stretches around the world and into his personal life. Peppered with murder, revenge, and first-rate espionage, Numbered Account is a thinking person's thriller, a refreshing break from the old standbys.

From Library Journal
Delacorte is definitely banking on this first novel, with domestic and foreign rights already sold. Featuring the ever-intriguing Swiss banking system of numbered accounts, Reich's thriller focuses on the ethical issues of the origin and funding activities of huge "anonymous" sums. Enter ex-Marine Nicholas Neumann, who arrives at United Swiss Bank, his father's employer, to solve his murder 17 years ago when Nick was a child. Nick's quest throws him into an international web of hostile takeovers, drugs, and arms sales (including a nuclear weapon). A potential problem is the stereotypic portrayal of the primary villain as a ruthless Muslim. The novel is definitely a male fantasy, for after he conquers all, Neumann returns to the States to reclaim the fiancee who dropped him when he left for Zurich. This has almost all the elements of a best seller: murder, exotic locales, high finance, and danger, but there is surprisingly little sex; does the violence substitute? For public libraries with a large demand for thrillers.
-?Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib, Highland Heights
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Reich's debut thriller couldn't be more timely: A brash American insider tracks down the endlessly dirty high-level secrets in the Swiss banking establishment. Nicholas Neumann's left his dream job with Morgan Stanley to take a trainee position with the United Swiss Bank for just one reason: to find out who killed his father, a USB veteran shot to death by someone he trusted shortly after opening USB's Los Angeles branch. Nick is so consumed by a thirst for revenge that he's even broken his engagement in order to settle in frigid Zurich, where he's convinced the roots of his father's murder lie buried. But before he can dope out the meaning of the cryptic final entries in his father's 1979 daybook, he's snarled in the bank's own intrigues. Neighboring Adler Bank, looking to seize control of the USB, is buying up shares with a bottomless purse of cash, and every USB stalwart is being asked to do his utmost- -even if it means committing fraud on a massive scale--to prevent the hostile takeover. And Nick, who's been in Zurich for only six weeks, is quickly in the middle of the action, thanks to a bit of initiative that brings him to the attention of USB Director Wolfgang Kaiser. What began as a quest for personal revenge turns--as in Reich's obvious model, Allan Folsom's The Day After Tomorrow (1994)--into a monstrous plot of global proportions; and, as in Folsom, the story loses credibility to the extent that it forsakes its hero's vendetta for the fate of nations. Loses credibility, but never excitement, as the corpses pile up in a crescendo of nuclear weapons, betrayals, and billions of Swiss francs. A sleek, deliriously overscaled wish-fulfillment fantasy perfectly judged to persuade you that all today's favorite enemies--treacherous Arabs, warlike ex-Soviet renegades, venture capitalists, Swiss bankers--are in bed together with the man who killed your father. ($300,000 ad/promo; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; author tour; radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

Revenge and terror: a delicious concoction
Nick Neumann has what, at first glance, appears to be the perfect life. The former U.S. Marine just graduated from Harvard Business School and has joined the fast-paced world of Wall Street. His girlfriend is beautiful, the scion of an incredibly wealthy family. But Nick does have one problem: the unsolved murder of his father weighs heavily on his mind.

His father, murdered almost twenty years ago, worked for the secretive Swiss bank USB. And so Nick decides to follow in his footsteps: to move to Switzerland, join USB, and determine whether the trail can be followed or whether's it's gone cold.

Within days of joining USB, Nick finds himself entangled in a nightmarish conflict. The "Pasha", USB's premier client, is moving ever larger sums of money through the bank in seemingly nonsensical fashion. The DEA, investigating large-scale money transfers through USB, begins squeezing Nick for information. And an attractive vice president at the bank seems to be paying very close attention to Nick's activities.

This is Reich's first book and is, simply put, masterful. While its length (750 pages) is daunting, Reich's firsthand knowledge of the Swiss banking industry is invaluable and enlightening. I can almost guarantee that you'll be swept into this ambitious and fulfilling story: revenge and terror mixed into a near-perfect concoction.

Entertaining but not particularly memorable
This novel was compelling enough to keep me reading through until the end, even though it ran to over 700 pages. That said, however, Numbered Account is not especially memorable in terms of plot, characters or suspense -- all things that make reading for entertainment a worthwhile pursuit.

Nick Neumann is a likeable enough character, but he somehow didn't inspire a lot of passion from me in terms of whether or not he survives his situation and goes on to live a productive life. *Spoiler coming up.* And the fact that he ends up with his former fiance, Anna, is neither surprising nor very interesting since we never really get to know her and she never actually appears in the book.

I'm just not that curious about Swiss banking procedures to rate this story any higher than a 3. This is the kind of paperback that, should you find it lying around the vacation condo on a rainy day, you would pick up and read, but don't go out of your way to purchase it.

Maybe Reich's other books are more engaging than this one, given that other reviewers have awarded more stars than I. Somehow, though, I doubt I'll ever find out because Numbered Account just didn't get my number, so to speak.

Very good book
"Numbered Account" is a very good book: the plot is interesting and the more you go on with it, the faster you want to turn pages. Although the beginning may be a bit slow, Reich makes his best when he describes the Swiss bank system, and it is almost as if you could hear the steps of someone entering one of these huge Swiss banks that look like ancient temples with their own codes and laws. The characters have enough depth and it is absolutely intriguing to enter the world of the private banking in Switzerland. The country is well described, while the emotional conflict of the main character is nicely outlined. It is evident that the author has a great knowledge of Switzerland, its banking system, and he has great skill because he managed to mix a potential boring theme like banking with a pacing personal war of Nicholas Neumann, the main character. Definitely a book that is worth to be bought and read.