Full Circle
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4.4 • 33 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Master crime writer Chris Hammer returns with his first standalone blockbuster thriller.
‘If there is enough money involved, truth becomes a tradeable commodity. Like gold, it is malleable; it can be melted down and recast without losing its value.’
Travis Somerland is a man accustomed to danger, but nothing can prepare him for the peril, the intrigue or the ruthlessness that confront him at Montechino. Or the murders.
Montechino: part palace, part fortress, and the secluded estate of the uber-wealthy Claptons, modern-day robber barons who believe business is arithmetic, not morality.
Now Travis finds himself entangled in the ultimate power struggle, generations in the making, as the Claptons challenge the authority of one of the country’s most formidable families. Can he survive the dynastic rivalries to bring some measure of justice to an unjust world?
With echoes of Succession and The Big Short, and a dusting of The Great Gatsby, Full Circle is a thrilling, epic and unforgettable story of intrigue and revenge, love and redemption.
Customer Reviews
Derivative, literally as well as financially
3.5 stars
The author is an Australian journalist turned genre novelist with two non-fiction titles and eight best-selling novels, in two series, to his credit. This, his latest, is billed as a standalone, but journalist Martin Scarsden, a Hammer regular, does get checked.
It is set mainly in Sorrento, Victoria, near the eastern entrance to Port Phillip Bay and the Bellarine Peninsula on the opposite side.
Protagonist Travis is an undercover AFP cop on the trail of corporate malfeasance in an Australian multinational that, while listed on the market, is controlled by the founding family, the head honcho of which has the initials RM, and who has 3 kids vying to be his heir (two male, one female, the latter sidelined). But wait, there’s another corporate spy in the ointment, female this time, who turns out to be a relative from the “wrong side” of the fam. The wheels come off after she and Travis fall in lurrvve and confess to each other, sort of. Meanwhile, a notorious short-seller, who now owns the Georgian mansion at Point Nepean (near Sorrento) that used to belong to the family of the aforementioned RM (or Logan Roy, please yourself what you call him), does his financial thang on RM’s company, reducing it to a shadow of its former self vulnerable to takeover by corporate bottom feeders, including the estranged brother of RM, a Jay Gatsby type who lives in a resort-like mansion just up the road and the 23-year-old daughter of the short-seller dude I mentioned earlier. On top of all of this, multiple persons get dead too, mostly by homicide, but the police investigation is hamstrung by dodgy types in high places. Yada, yada, our boy and his new GF, also an undercover cop, sort things out by the end. I’m not sure whether Mr H has a sequel in mind, but wouldn’t be surprised.
Third-person narrative from various POVs, mainly the protagonist and his GF/accomplices, which shifts back and forth between 1970 and the present day to fill in back story. Pace variable, but prose easy to read. Multiple sub-plots, lengthy dramatic personae with limited time for character development. Many, if not most, are stereotypes as a result. In addition to Succession/the Murdoch family saga, and The Great Gatsby, Mr H draws liberally from — some might say rips off — The Big Short with detailed explanations of share market wheeling and dealing that will leave some, possibly many, readers cold and those who are also traders rolling their eyes. Suffice it to say, short-selling is more banal, and less bloody, in real life.