Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: The Wealth of Shadows: A Novel by Graham Moore

A small anonymous group plotting the downfall of the Nazi German economy in 1939 sounds like the stuff of a Ken Follett novel, yet Graham Moore has assembled an impressive bibliography of historical sources to create his fact-based novel showing that very feat was attempted in the early days of World War II. The Wealth of Shadows (Random House, May 2024) is an unlikely piece of espionage fiction, focusing on the Gross National Product, the gold standard, and Keynesian economic theory. Yet this absorbing thriller seized my attention from the first chapter describing an obscure Minnesota tax attorney named Ansel Luxford who traveled to Washington, DC, to ask for a job to support the war effort. He ended up part of the small misleadingly named Research Department, well hidden in leased space on the top floor of a department store, where he and four others searched for financial ways to undermine the German juggernaut without overtly violating the United States isolationist policy.

Several officials within the U. S. government were willing to contravene that policy as long as the appearance of neutrality was maintained, so the group had hidden support for such devious gems as the Cash and Carry plan which stated the United States would sell airplanes, tanks, and munitions to any country but payment had to be in U. S. dollars and the buyer had to come to America to take possession. Apparently equitable and aboveboard except that England and France were the only two countries that could safely cross the Atlantic, and Germany did not have a stockpile of U. S. dollars.

As much as I appreciated the game of words the group undertook, the characters are the strongest part of the book. Ansel Luxford and his wife Angela both firmly believed in the war effort and that they had to do what they could to support it. His boss in DC was chain-smoking curmudgeon Harry Dexter White, who was later believed to be a spy for Russia. The sole woman on his team was also the most educated. Mabel Newcomer had a doctorate in economics from Columbia and taught economics at Vassar. The colorful John Maynard Keynes was front and center, as had to be expected on any major discussion of 20^th century economics.

The final section explains chapter by chapter the sources Moore used, which parts were fictional, mostly the dialogue, and where he deviated from the actual timeline, which he rarely did.

A well-documented fact-based World War II espionage thriller, well written, ingeniously conceived, and skillfully executed. One of my best reads of 2024. Highly recommended!

 

·       Publisher: ‎Random House (May 21, 2024)

·       Language: ‎English

·       Hardcover: ‎384 pages

·       ISBN-10: ‎0593731921

·       ISBN-13: ‎978-0593731925

 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3LZwMyS 

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2024 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.