Martin Bodenham's Blog, page 2

Free trade – Canada needs to put the consumer first

Now that the NAFTA renegotiation is out of the way, it’s time Canada got to grips with the free trade restrictions within its borders.

Last year, my sister-in-law, who lives in the UK, enjoyed a very nice wine from Canada’s Niagara wine region. She recommended it to me, so I went out to see if it was sold in one of the government-controlled liquor stores here in BC. No luck. No problem, I thought. I’ll order some from the winery. After all, if people in the UK can buy it, I assumed the winery would have no issue shipping some to me across Canada. Wrong! It seems I had stumbled across one of the many interprovincial barriers to free trade in this country. The winery was unable to sell to me because it would breach the rules limiting the importation of alcohol from elsewhere in Canada. You read that right: from elsewhere in Canada.

Most of my life has been spent in the UK, so I’m used to the free flow of goods and services between England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Most people from the UK don’t give the notion of free trade within the country a second thought. Recently, however, the Brexit negotiations have highlighted the importance of free trade to UK residents because the EU has suggested erecting a trade border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. This will never happen. Such an arrangement would be a complete anathema to most Brits.

So, as a recently-minted Canadian citizen, you can imagine my horror at discovering Canada’s fondness for trade barriers within the country. The more you dig into this subject, the less you wonder why many of the goods and services here are so expensive. It appears internal barriers are there to serve the interests of provincially-owned monopolies over consumers.

Surely, I hear you say, the constitution would prevent this, as it does in other federal countries like the US and Australia. It should. Section 121 of the Canadian Constitution Act states that the goods of one province “must be admitted free into each of the other provinces.” This seems clear enough to me. Unfortunately, however, earlier this year, Canada’s supreme court ruled in the Comeau case that New Brunswick was right to fine Mr. Comeau for bringing in all but a modest amount of alcohol into the province from Quebec, where it was cheaper.

The court ruled that the restriction of cross-border trade must be the primary purpose of a measure in order for it to be invalid under Section 121. In other words, a province can prevent the free flow of goods from another province if it has another reason for doing so. In the Comeau case, New Brunswick argued its limitation on out-of-province alcohol was to meet its objective of ensuring public supervision of alcohol within the province. That alternative rationale was enough to dismiss the free trade protections of Section 121. One only has to look at the massive tax revenue generated by in-province alcohol sales to arrive at the real reason for such restrictions.

Don’t even get me started on car insurance here in BC, where there is only one monopoly supplier of basic vehicle insurance and that is owned by the province. Even though the competition would lower premiums for consumers, drivers in BC cannot buy the cover from out-of-province suppliers. Once again, the rules work against the interests of free trade and Canadians.

It is time the federal government started putting the consumer first and introduced new legislation to liberalize trade within Canada. Change won’t come from the provinces. They have too much to lose from the entrenched arrangements of the status quo.

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Let’s eat Grandma

Grammar and punctuation matter.

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Bravery in the face of overwhelming odds

Sometimes you come across true-life stories that would be incredible if written in a novel. The account of the bravery in the face of overwhelming odds demonstrated by Brian Woods MC and his comrades when serving in Iraq is one such example.

I would encourage anyone interested in hearing about the realities of war and how the people who defend us can be let down by the system to listen to episode 1 of the Declassified podcasts produced by Michael Coates. It is a gritty, heartfelt account of one man’s struggle for justice.

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Derek Thompson reflects on the film noir influence in his spy novels

Occasionally, I like to include in my blog contributions from fellow thriller authors. This week, Derek Thompson, author of the Thomas Bladen British spy thrillers, reflects on the film noir influence in his spy novels.

 

In His Own Words

I’ve made no secret of the fact that Raymond Chandler’s writing is one of the inspirations for my Thomas Bladen spy thrillers, but I also owe a huge debt to cinema. It’s my great pleasure now to introduce you to a back catalogue of films that remain classics of the spy / thriller genre. Many of them are derived from novels but for consistency I will only reference the films and I’ve added the IMDB links so you can read about the plot in more detail. I hope you find some old favourites here, as well as some ‘new’ classics to add to your own list.

We’ll come back to Raymond Chandler in a bit. First and foremost, I have to pay tribute to The 39 Steps, a tale of a man unwittingly drawn into a murderous conspiracy, who goes on the run to prove his innocence. I favour the 1935 version with Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll, as well as a brilliant BBC version from 2008 (which includes elements from the novel that were left out of every other film). How much do I love The 39 Steps? Well, in Standpoint, Thomas watches the 1935 version with Miranda and comments on how Hitchcock changed the story from the novel. There’s also a homage to one of the film’s plot devices in Line of Sight, my follow-up to Standpoint. I put North by Northwest (1959) alongside The 39 Steps as another great example of a mistaken identity driving the plot forward. How do you win through when you don’t know what you’re supposed to know? I think it helps to have other people looking out for you from time to time.

The films Farewell My Lovely (1944), The Big Sleep (1946) and The Long Goodbye (1973) allow Raymond Chandler’s world-weary private detective, Philip Marlowe, to fill the screen; much like Bogart’s performance as Sam Spade in the Dashiell Hammett co-scripted adaptation of The Maltese Falcon.

My original intention had been to write Thomas Bladen as a detective, only he arrived pretty much fully formed and had his own opinions about what he did for a living. What I love most about this batch of films is the dialogue and the characterisation. The plots are well-crafted but to me they are secondary. The ‘hero’ is flawed and his attitude is often more hindrance than help as he battles relentlessly against the tide. These films are gritty, sometimes sleazy and show the underbelly of society. Yet somehow, almost miraculously, the hero emerges with most of his honour intact. My fondness for this genre led to the creation of Leon Thurston, a West Indian private detective who plies his trade from an old minicab office in Dalston. East London. While we’re on the subject of Chandler, make time for The Blue Dahlia (1947) – it’s an intriguing whodunit that apparently involved a controversial rewritten ending…but you can research that for yourself! Like Alan Ladd’s Johnny Morrison, Thomas Bladen is a little out of steps with the world around him, but the right woman makes all the difference.

Spies yet? Well, almost. Vicious Circle (1957) finds a humble doctor (humble but with a cravat!) drawn into a deadly game of blackmail and intrigue that leads him questioning who is out to get him – and why? I’d put this one in the same category as The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and also (1956). Ordinary people in extraordinary times, who dig deep when they find themselves pawns in a much bigger game – much like Robert Hannay in The 39 Steps.

Both The Conversation (1974) and Enemy of the State (1998) tackle surveillance, paranoia and ethics, along with the perennial question of who watches the watchers. It is perennial too, as that phrase is as old as the Romans. In Thomas Bladen’s world, a simple surveillance job often turns out to be far more complicated and it doesn’t pay to ask too many questions (not that it stops him). The observer may seem impartial but they cannot deny there are consequences to their work. Three Days of the Condor (1975) pits one man against the ‘organisation’, by trying to stay one step ahead of everyone, in order to get to the truth and hold people in power accountable. By book five, Flashpoint, Thomas has learned that justice can take many forms and sometimes even a bitter compromise is the best option. The Third Man (1949) involves a mystery, a disappearing act with a difference and a conspiracy – how do you find out the truth when everyone is telling you something different? Its cunning and amoral titular character (compelling played by Orson Welles) dominates the film despite not being the main role. This group of films demonstrate another element that I wanted to bring to my books: unresolved endings. The moviegoer is left wondering what could happen afterwards.

I hope you’ll make time to watch all these films, even if you’ve seen them before.

For those who enjoy extra homework, make time for:

The Long Memory (1953), Rear Window (1954), A Prize of Arms (1962), Gilda (1946), Build My Gallows High (1946), and In a Lonely Place (1946)

When not watching classic cinema, I write Thomas Bladen spy thrillers – intrigue, action and sardonic humour.

FLASHPOINT – Part Five of the Spy Chaser series

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After London suffers a coordinated terror attack, Thomas Bladen questions everything – his future with Miranda, his Surveillance Support Unit job and even his clandestine role as a Spy Chaser.

But his troubles are just beginning.

When the Unit comes under MI5’s control and two senior SSU staff disappear, his search for answers is blocked at every turn.

A missing handgun and the reappearance of old adversaries forces him into uneasy alliances and hard choices.

– Could there be a double agent in their latest assignment?

– What is behind the rift between government departments?

– And what if he has got it all wrong this time?

Thomas must face his deepest fears and what he discovers could change the rules forever.

Dear Mr. Bezos, voting isn’t just for the wealthy

Does a reader of one of my novels who spends little or nothing with Amazon have any less right to express his/her opinion of my work than someone who shells out £40 per annum to the Seattle-based giant? I think not.

Amazon has been a force for good for much of its short history. Sadly, like many dominant corporations, it runs the risk of economic overreach. My fear is sparked by the recent introduction of a minimum annual spend before a customer can post reviews on its website.

Customer reviews posted online have been one of the great democratizing achievements of the internet, giving voice to millions of consumers and thus allowing others to benefit from the wisdom of crowds. One only has to consider the impact of platforms like TripAdvisor to appreciate how far we have come in enabling consumers to share their views and opinions. Until now, I would have said Amazon has made a similar positive contribution to the dissemination of real market feedback.

Recently, however, Amazon introduced a minimum annual spend—£40 in the UK and $50 in the US—before a customer is allowed to post a review of a product. This new policy appears ill-considered and is likely to have unfair—but I hope, unintended—consequences. Previously, there was no such minimum requirement. I can see no reasonable justification for the change. No doubt, Amazon would argue that it is seeking to eradicate fake reviews, seeking only genuine views from real customers. That is a fair objective, but it is one which could easily be met by only allowing reviews from what Amazon terms “verified purchasers”. After all, it knows whether a customer has bought the product.

The introduction of a minimum annual spend before being able to voice an opinion reminds me of the disenfranchisement of much of the population in the nineteenth century. For most of that century, only wealthy property-owning males were permitted to vote in the UK. The rules were amended in the Great Reform Act to allow men who paid more than £10 in rent the right to vote. That still left most of the population without a franchise. Those in power didn’t think women and lower-earning males had opinions worth counting.

Amazon’s recent changes strike me as an anachronism in this age of social media and increased transparency for consumers.

I ask Mr. Bezos to think again.

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Once A Killer to be reissued

My financial thriller novel, Once A Killer, will be reissued by Down & Out Books on June 11.  Set on Wall Street, the novel tells the story of a successful M&A lawyer who is blackmailed by the Eastern European mafia into providing insider trading information on his deals.  If you like the TV series Billions, you should love this one.

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The Geneva Connection is reissued today

My 2012 debut novel, The Geneva Connection, is reissued today by Down & Out Books. I hope you enjoy the facelift.

Still number one on Goodreads’ Best Financial Thrillers list.

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What makes a great financial thriller?

One of my favorite movies is 12 Angry Men, a courtroom drama showing the emotional turmoil within the jury room during a murder trial. It’s an oldie, but still worth watching today. The legal thriller has been with us for some considerable time, and the works of John Grisham, Michael Connelly, Mark Gimenez and many others have kept us hooked on the genre to this day.

By contrast, the financial thriller is still finding its feet as a sub-set of crime fiction. The earliest work of its type that I’ve read was The Billion Dollar Sure Thing, a 1973 novel written by former banker and convicted fraudster, Paul Erdman. He wrote it while awaiting trial in a Swiss jail. Erdman called his books “fi-fi” but, sadly, the genre label never stuck. Apart from The Millionaires by Brad Meltzer, and one or two others, for some reason, the financial thriller hasn’t yet witnessed the long line of big name authors sported by its legal cousin.

One reason I suspect it hasn’t achieved the same traction is the public’s aversion to numbers. Mention the words equation, percentage, fraction, and multiplication to most people I know and their eyes glaze over. I get much the same reaction from friends when I tell them my first career was in private equity and investment banking. Instinctively, they flinch and quickly move the conversation on to another subject.

The sad thing is that financial thrillers can grip an audience when they are done well. Take the 1987 Oliver Stone movie, Wall Street—the film that made famous the phrase “Greed is good” and thus gave permission to everyone to despise investment bankers. The movie won an Oscar and a Golden Globe and made good money at the box office. The current TV series, Billions, starring Damian Lewis, is another example of how a well-told financial tale can keep an audience hooked.

So what makes a great financial thriller? Having written three of them, I’d say there are two essential ingredients. First, don’t get weighed down by too many monetary details. When I wrote the first draft of The Geneva Connection, I had a couple of my beta-readers tell me to take out all the references to financial instruments. They said it turned them off. At first, I protested, arguing that such detail gave the book authenticity. They said most people don’t care about the intricacies of private equity, and they were right. When I stripped it all out, I found I had a much better book, one that flowed, freeing the reader from unnecessary interruptions that did nothing to advance the story. The lesson I learned was that if a financial thriller is to find a large audience, it has to be written for the non-technical reader. My mistake was writing that first draft for people with a private equity background. While the financial markets form the background to novels in this genre, they should remain just that—a setting and nothing more.

The second essential ingredient is that the narrative has to involve a conflict between fully rounded people. By that, I mean it simply cannot rely on a fast-moving plot and a sexy setting. The main characters have to be living, breathing individuals with human failings and aspirations and not one dimensional cardboard cut-outs. In my view, that is why Billions works so well while many others haven’t. The characters played by Damian Lewis and Paul Giamatti have all the same human hopes and failings as us. That’s what makes us care about what happens to them. Yes, it’s interesting to imagine what life would be like as a billionaire running a Wall Street hedge fund, but that’s not what captivates the audience; the people do.

[image error]My latest financial thriller, Shakedown, describes a federal government on the brink of bankruptcy and it resorts to selling off federal assets to private equity companies to stay afloat. The novel portrays a terrifying web of organized crime—extending all the way to the White House itself—involving blackmail and assassination on an industrial scale. Sure it’s set against the backdrop of billion-dollar corporate deals and private equity, but the real story is to be found in the conflict between the main character, Damon Traynor, who runs the private equity firm and Ben Mylor, the government’s criminal fixer, who knows no bounds as he carries out the president’s bidding.

This article first appeared as a guest contribution to The LitReactor Magazine in November 2017.

From Finance to Fiction

When I tell people I was once an investment banker, I always watch for their first reaction.  Normally, it isn’t positive; the immediate flinch is usually followed by a strange look.  It’s as if they want to spit at me, but they feel sorry for me at the same time.  Next comes the inevitable question: What on earth made you want to do that?  It seems, following the financial crisis almost ten years ago, my old industry is still down there with tax inspectors, politicians and used car salesmen.

It wasn’t always like that.  When I entered the world of private equity in the 1980s, I spent most of my time providing risk capital to companies that were looking to grow.  It was a job I was proud to do.  I saw it as forging a partnership between our capital and the management team of each investee company in order to create a successful enterprise.

But something changed during the late 1980s and early 1990s.  The culture shifted; it became less about helping businesses develop and more about buying and selling companies for rapid gain.  Along the way, in search of quick wins from cutting costs, shedding labor, closing underperforming units, and changing senior management, much of my industry morphed into something unrecognizable.  “Management is a variable,” I remember one well-known banker telling me, his face beaming with pride.  While I like to think I stayed on the right side of the line, it is little wonder the public baulked at taxpayer-funded bailouts for the banks and many other former financial masters of the universe during 2008/09.

[image error]In fact, it was the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 that formed the genesis of the plot for my first novel, The Geneva Connection.  The momentous failure made me question who was next, particularly when some of the biggest names in the sector were frantically scratching around for equity to prop up their rapidly evaporating balance sheets.  Back then, I was running a private equity firm of my own and I began to wonder what would happen if any of the financial institutions that had bankrolled private equity funds for years suddenly failed.

The thought stayed with me for a couple of years before I started writing my book.  I knew I had a story to tell.  The Geneva Connection was going to describe a private equity firm’s desperate scrabble to find new backers when its main funder becomes bankrupt.  In that struggle, the fictitious firm unknowingly accepts new money from a Geneva-based institution that turns out to be a front and money-laundering operation for the world’s largest drug cartel.

 

Problem was I knew nothing about writing novels, so I spent another couple of years researching the art of creative writing.  By the time I’d finished it, I calculated that my book took something like five years from conception to publication.  But it proved to be a watershed period in my life.  Today, I no longer work in finance.  I write full-time, and my third novel, Shakedown, comes out this month, published by US publisher, Down & Out Books.  All three of my novels have been financial crime thrillers.  The big egos and the greed and fear of the financial markets have been great sources of inspiration for my stories.

So what have I learned from my transition from corporate financier to professional scribbler?  Well, it’s a much quieter life now.  Whereas once my days were filled with back-to-back meetings, now, some days, I don’t see anyone other than my wife as I sit hunched over the keyboard.  Funnily enough, I haven’t found that change too difficult, but I know some writers find it a struggle.  An author friend of mine—also a former investment banker—actually rented an office in his former employer’s building, so as to retain a working environment with which he was familiar while he wrote his early books.  I know of another well-known crime writer—a former journalist—who has to have the TV news playing loudly in the background as he writes.  He misses the noises of his old newsroom.

Another thing I’ve learned is that getting published is a numbers game, much like it is in private equity.  In my old life, I would receive thousands of business plans each year, and we’d take maybe every one in a hundred seriously enough to investigate them further.  Even fewer would make it all the way though to getting financed.  The numbers are pretty much the same in publishing.  Agents and publishers receive thousands of submissions each year, and yet a very few of them actually get published.

One final thing I’ve noticed is that compared to the world of corporate deal-making, the publishing trade moves at a glacial speed.  Even when a book finds favor with an agent or publisher, it can take a year or two before it actually appears on the shelves.  In this age of digital technology, I still find that hard to comprehend.

One question I get asked all the time is whether I miss the excitement of my old life.  My answer is always the same: I used to move money about, but now I get to kill people for a living.  How many people can say that?

 

This article first appeared as a guest post on the popular fiction writing blog, Elizabeth A. White.

The Geneva Connection is to be re-published

My 2012 debut financial thriller novel, The Geneva Connection, is to be re-published by Down and Out Books in March next year. It will have a shiny new cover which, I think, really captures the dark threat represented by the Mexican drug cartel. I hope you like the new image. The reissued version of the book is available for pre-order now on Amazon.

Down and Out Books also published my latest novel, Shakedown, earlier this week.

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