The Silent Oligarch
Chris Morgan Jones

Penguin Press
Jan 19, 2012/ISBN: 978-1-59420-319-0
Thriller / Espionage
Amazon

Reviewed by Claudia VanLydegraf

The Silent Oligarch is one of the fastest paced romps I have read, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Chris Morgan Jones lays the ground work and the plots so well, you never quite can figure out where you are in the tie-ups. You start off with a little guy in the Russian Parliament, who has a bit of power, and you end up with dead bodies and international agents running for their lives because of the things they thought they knew, but maybe were not so sure about, until people started dying. There is much money in the underworld of politics and nation building, and the good servants in Moscow seem to have their hands in the heart of the corruption. Konstanin Malin is in charge of an agency buried deep inside the Russian Government. He has a foot-man to position the dirty deals in places that are safe and no one can find, so he will retire with a very strong nestegg when his time comes to bequeath his job to some other unsuspecting lackey. His co-conspirator is a guy named Richard Lock, who does all the little dirty jobs and finding the right venues for all the money his relative by marriage/boss passes on to him so he can bury it in plain sight in the Caymans. Actually that is what first raises the suspicions. People watch what others do, but no one seems to pay attention to it. Lock does his master's bidding, but all the time his marriage and life are falling apart. When he starts to wake up to the problems that are building, he starts to think he may not always have to do what he is doing now, and he tries to figure a way out.

Enter Benjamin Webster, who is an Investigator with a top London firm. He used to be a very wide-eyed journalist, but things changed and he lost his innocence when his colleague was murdered for asking too many questions. Malin is hiding assets, Lock is doing his bosses' mysterious errands and dirty work, all the while becoming his bosses greatest liability, Webster is investigating and the world keeps on giving up the dead. And it all leads back to Malin. Webster must find out the story behind the subterfuge and Lock starts losing his cool while falling apart to keep his own life safe.

This book is intriguing and quickly grabs your attention so much so you really hate to put it down. But, you have to finish it to find out all the secrets of the rich and not-so-famous. Enjoy it, I did.....