Zero Ri$k by Simon Hayes

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Zero Ri$k by Simon Hayes

When customer complaints on Christmas Eve about tenfold inflated bank balances herald not early gifts, nor a botched system upgrade, but the most sophisticated cyber attack in history, National Bank Chief Operating Officer Rob Tanner finds himself in the eye of a ‘Black Swan’ storm no one predicted, but anyone could have anticipated.

He enlists the help of brilliant American computer security expert Ashley Markham but the attacks only worsen: bank balances rise remorselessly and spread to all the nation’s banks. The only clue to the hacker’s intentions are cryptic daily emails, centred on Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval representation of the deadly sins, taunting Tanner and newly incumbent Prime Minister James Allen.

With financial markets—and the very world as he knows it—on the brink of collapse, Tanner races against the clock to decode not just the bizarre emails but their deeper meaning, and the implications for who he can really trust. All the while, his former boss “The Toad” is seeking revenge… and answers of his own.

This enthralling, multi-layered debut follows the story of a disillusioned banker facing unthinkable financial Armageddon, where money has no value, stock and bond prices are meaningless, and the economy is destroyed. Can Tanner unravel the mystery of the hacker’s obsession with Bosch, sin and retribution before modern society returns to the dark ages?

Ten Days. Seven Deadly Sins. Zero Ri$k.

My Review

If you woke up one morning to find an extra nought at the end of your bank balance, you’d be delighted, right? Wrong! You can’t spend it, it’s not your money. It’s some kind of computer blip, except it’s not. It’s the work of the most sophisticated hacker or hackers the world has even seen And it could happen here, or anywhere, at any time.

The results would be devastating – that’s millions of accounts having an extra zero, then another and another, busting the banks, the world of finance, and the government, having to bail everyone out. It all looks like a joke to start with – an early Christmas present – but people must not go out and spend, spend, spend. There will be civil unrest and panic buying. Shelves stripped of flour and toilet paper. Soon we’ll be making banana bread out of spelt.

For James Allen, the Prime Minister, it’s a nightmare, one that could destroy his reputation, because that’s his main concern. Will he be the man in charge when the banks go down? Will they blame him? Will he have to resign and go out ‘not with a bang but a whimper’.

National Bank Chief Operating Officer Rob Tanner is out on a date with the lovely Judith, when the call comes. He’ll have to go into work. There’s been an emergency and he needs to help sort it out. He enlists the help of a computer security expert called Ashley Markham, who he happens to find very attractive. But things don’t get better, they get worse, and the only clues have been the emails, full of cryptic references to Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval representation of the seven deadly sins. What does it all mean?

Then there’s Rob’s boss, known as the ‘Toad’ to his employees, a despicable Harvey Weinstein type character, slimy, sleazy, and using his power and position to blackmail others, including his long-suffering assistant Chrissie.

It’s rather a long book (be warned) though it will fly by. You’ll be so engrossed in the story, you’ll be up half the night reading. And as well as one of the most engrossing stories you’ll read this year, there are some really interesting characters. My favourites are Gerard and Nikki, who I found more exciting than Rob, and then Ashley, of course. And we all hate James Allen and the Toad. Brilliant! Let’s hope Netflix picks it up soon. It will make a fantastic series (we were casting it on book club night and my money is on Keira Knightly as Ashley).

Many thanks to @LiterallyPR and the author for inviting me to be part of the #ZeroRisk blog tour.

About the Author

Simon Hayes is an award-winning former headhunter and investment banker. His finance career took him from his home city London, where he was a top-ranked securities analyst in the Institutional Investor and Extel surveys, to the US, Hong Kong and Japan. Search led Simon back to Tokyo, where he was recognised as the “Best Headhunting Executive” in Japan by Asiamoney then, as head of a leading London-based Financial Services practice, into the City’s most exclusive boardrooms. He wrote Zero Risk, his first novel, whilst creating the rubrics people skills system, and he spent much of 2023 in Zimbabwe on a major fraud case. Born and raised in West London, Simon was the first member of his family to attend university, graduating from Trinity Hall, Cambridge with a degree in Law.