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 20th
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.
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