The book that launched an entire genre of ‘financial thrillers’
“A wonderful, glossy, sexy thriller set in the City, masses of plotting, counter-plotting and double doubles, a marvellously brave, beautiful brilliant heroine, a devastatingly desirable baddie-hero and the kind of detail that involves you 101 per cent. The only thing I didn’t like was finishing it.”
— Penny Vincenzi – ‘Top names pick Christmas Books of the year’ in the Daily Mail
Preview:
Sarah Jensen is a brilliant but deeply troubled trader turned MI6 agent who goes undercover to investigate a bank suspected of major international fraud. The mission is far more dangerous than Sarah realises.
Suspect number one is Dante Scarpirato – rich, smart, uncomfortably attractive. Sarah’s investigation leads her deep into a world of deceit, ruthless power brokers and a doomed relationship with Scarpirato.
As Sarah confronts criminals who will stop at nothing – even murder – to prevent her from finding the truth, she must confront her own deep and twisted secrets that have haunted her since childhood…But provide the only path to safety and redemption.
Heralded by USA Today as the most talked about book of the year, Nest of Vipers is an international bestseller (published in more than thirty countries, optioned three times by major Hollywood studios) that launched the financial thriller genre and is written by one of the first women to step into the arena of global high finance.
Stellar worldwide reviews:
“Wall Street’s answer to Scott Turow.”
NEW WOMAN
“Authentic, gripping, utterly fascinating.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“One point McLuhan made was that artists… are always ahead of their times, if only we would listen to them. Linda Davies wrote a novel based on one of these computer whizz-kids who decided to exploit the system, make a gazillion, while also being employed by the Bank of England as a mole who would rat on his mates. She wrote three years ago what sweet-faced little Nick Leeson accomplished in Singapore last week. …Barbarians are at the Gate. It is a Nest of Vipers.”
Allan Fotheringham, “The lesson of Nick Leeson”, Maclean’s, 1995
“If John Grisham were female and British, he might write a twisty thriller such as Nest of Vipers.”
FORTUNE MAGAZINE
When banking meets espionage and the mob:
On 9 February 2005, in a response to an FOI request for information about sterling’s expulsion from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday, September 16, 1992, the Civil Service inadvertently revealed that MI6 had provided the British government with secret information about impending French interest rate changes.
The former British agent Richard Tomlinson claimed in September 1998 that MI6 had a spy in the Bundesbank code-named Orcada, who provided inside information on Germany’s proposed interest rate movements.
The former British agent Richard Tomlinson claimed in September 1998 that MI6 had a spy in the Bundesbank code-named Orcada, who provided inside information on Germany’s proposed interest rate movements.
Continue the Sarah Jensen series:
Linda Davies develops the world of Nest of Vipers. Our heroine Sarah Jensen returns in Linda Davies’ Something Wild.
Linda’s related articles
The high price of being a female City Slicker (written for The Daily Express)
- The perfect crime (written for The Independent)
- The inspiration of place
- Greed and ‘Women Beware Women’ (written for the National Theatre)
- Fraud: A Class Act (written for the National Theatre)
- Merchants of menace (written for The Sunday Times)
Photo: President Alberto Fujimori is presented with a copy of the novel Nido de Viboras, the Spanish edition of Nest of Vipers, by Rupert Wise (left), husband of the author Linda Davies. This photograph was taken on board the presidential plane when President Fujimori was flying to London with a group of bankers and business leaders to attend a Latin American investment conference in February 1997, in order to attract foreign investment to Peru, a task made more difficult by the ongoing hostage crisis.
