Erdman's works are thrillers with a twist: his intrigues are all financial. Erdman has some kind of world-class high finance background, and his stories all revolve about some gigantic international plot to cripple the world's financial markets to bring about some end. Enter a hero in a banker's suit who displays financial and political brilliance, saves the world, and wins the girl. Who says bankers are boring?

Light read, unless international finance hurts your brain. The finance is really pretty simple: the US decides it needs to return to the gold standard, but in order to do so, it must put a reasonable dollar price on gold, and that price is going to be a huge leap from current prices. It's going to happen in a couple of days and it's top top secret. However, a Swiss banker finds out, and a Soviet finance minister, and some people have been betting on this all along, and....

If the above generic description sounds interesting, you should really like this book. A quick read, maybe 3 hours. The idea is that Latin America decides to default on all its debt to the US, crushing the dollar and shutting the Americans up once and for all. They can do this if they have help from Europe (more US-haters) and if they can get the Russians to agree to the accompanying management of oil and gold markets. Oops, can't forget Carlos and the Palestinian terrorists who aim to maximize the fear at just the right moment.... Whee!

Standard Erdman fare. American central banker circulating in the top of world finance ends up in a Swiss jail charged with heinous crimes. His beautiful wife is the only human who stands by him. With the help of Big International Gangsters, he gets away, foils the bad guys (all of them) cleans up the mess, and lives happily ever after.