Word: erdman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Dogs of War, Forsyth (2) 4-Jaws, Bench/ey (6) 5-House of a Thousand Lanterns, Holt (4) 6-Watership Down, Adams (5) 7-The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Meyer (7) 8-Cashelmara, Howafch (9) 9-The War Between the Tates, Lorie (8) 10-The Silver Bears, Erdman (10) NONFICTION 1 -All the President' s Men, Bernsfein & Woodward (1) 2-The Memory Book, Lorayne & Lucas(2) 3-The Woman He Loved, Martin (3) 4-You Can Profit from a Monetary Crisis, Browne (4) 5-Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, Read (5) 6-More Joy, Comfort...
...Silver Bears, Erdman...
Baser Metal. Paul Erdman is an exception. Although he is not the James Joyce of high finance, he is not Jacqueline Susann either. His plots and characters tend to be simple, but he combines a zest for the intricate poetry of the big deal with the ability and cheerful willingness to explain it. His first novel, the bestselling The Billion Dollar Sure Thing, straightened out the mysterious alchemy of the international gold market. It earned added interest from Erdman himself, a financier and economist who wrote the book while a resident in the Basel prison. The Swiss government insisted that...
...Erdman believes, the largest market manipulation in history, and his fact-filled fictional explanation goes like this. Some American Mafiosi, looking for a place to launder their tainted, untaxed dollars, buy a small Swiss bank. One of their first ventures is to bankroll an aristocratic Iranian who claims to have a huge silver mine. Word of this hoard leaks out to one of the world's richest men who also enjoys cornering the world's silver supply. Fearing that the Iranian's silver will flood the market and dilute the price, he makes an offer that even...
...Although Erdman does not neglect characterization and the mechanics of storytelling, he is more intent on delivering cold truths. Mainly, that whatever speculators were hearing about the future of silver in 1969, it was largely piped misinformation from a handful of supersophisticated con men. In his novel, the lords of both the underworld and over-world put aside hurt pride to concentrate on profit by colluding to rig the market. All those dentists, airline pilots and what Erdman gleefully calls "greedy widows" who invested in silver futures never stood a chance. The odds of beating the professionals were about...