Gute Krimikost. Und das der tapfere Journalist am Ende doch für das größere Ganze klein beigibt und sich von den Tätern mit weißem Kragen bestechen lässt, entspricht wohl traurigerweise eher der schweizer Realität als alles andere. ( )

One of his best! ( )

Gutes Buch. Leider teilweise zu viele Zufälle und das Ende fand ich persönlich etwas enttäuschend. ( )

Très captivant dans une écriture simple.
Belle petite méthode de connaître ce que doit faire un réalisateur de films ( )

Montecristo is about a video journalist in Zurich, approaching his 40s, who finds his artistic aspirations in conflict with his involvement in the murky world of corporate interests and Big Money. As a video journalist in Zurich approaching my 40s and finding etc etc, I must admit this all seemed a little close to home. Fortunately, there were a few differences.

Jonas Brand, the hero of this story, is catapulted into adventure by two events: a stockbroker apparently jumping to his death from a train Jonas is on; and, secondly, coming into possession of two hundred-frank notes with identical serial numbers. My train journeys, by contrast, are generally marked by nothing more exciting than a vague uncertainty over whether the girl opposite me is wearing a skirt or culottes, while the likelihood of my having CHF200 in cash about my person is so low that duplicate serial numbers are the least of my worries.

This is a decently exciting story and most of the incidental details rang pretty true to me, although there were a couple of minor infelicities in Jamie Bulloch's translation: video journalists do not refer to their cameras as ‘camcorders’, and nor do they generally talk about their films as ‘reportages’. I was also highly amused to read that Jonas, as a VJ who occasionally includes himself in his reports, was recognised twice in the course of five pages, and even secured an apartment rental on the strength of his fame! Ha! I was on television daily for about ten years and was recognised precisely once, by a guy at the Lincoln city dump. I guess I found my audience…

Although a lot of this was good fun to read, and the underlying tale of financial misdemeanours was convincing enough, the whole thing did seem to hinge on a very implausible coincidence, and the pointedly cynical dénouement struck me as unlikely in the extreme. Jonas himself is an amiable central character, and his grizzled old-hack mentor is absolutely true to life; his girlfriend, though, is a sex object straight from central casting, who might have been easier to enjoy if there had been a couple of other more well-rounded women about to compare her with. Like a lot of thrillers (I find), the prose has a lot of weirdly unnecessary detail along the lines of He pushed his '99 Audio Quattro 2.1l into fifth gear and merged with traffic heading southbound on the A3…this one kept dropping into these pointless extreme close-ups during conversation:

With his knife Jonas pushed some sauce onto a fork of risotto, chewed it carefully and took a sip of wine before asking the crucial question: ‘How long does it take…?’

So much busywork in the writing – just get on with it! Still, I'm not going to pretend this is a some big disaster, because it isn't. It reads well, the story bombs along at a good old clip, and the moody descriptions of Zurich do great work in cementing the city's reputation as the home of shadowy elites and dodgy backroom banking. Everyone's in on the conspiracy, and no one can be trusted: certainly if any commuters ever leap to their death from my train to work, I'll be packing this book in an overnight bag and heading straight for the border, ‘camcorder’ in tow. ( )