By Paul Carrier
Weaver's investigation unfolds against a backdrop of financial chicanery involving the sometimes elusive but ever-powerful banks, trading houses and stockbrokers of London in the early 1700s.
These unscrupulous forces, which value profit above all else, provide eerie parallels to the corporate greed and dubious business ethics that plague our own era.
David Liss people's his novel with a fascinating cast of characters, from Weaver and other members of London's Jewish community to master criminal Jonathan Wild and assorted financiers, "gentlemen" and street thugs.
A Scottish surgeon, writer and bon vivant who serves as Weaver's sidekick adds a wry twist to the proceedings.
Weaver's first-person narration has an "antique" feel that is suitable to the setting, complete with plenty of period dialogue and idioms that help provide an appropriate sense of time and place. Thanks to Liss' skill, the reader truly is transported to an earlier time.
Liss' work earns high marks among fans of historical fiction, and deservedly so. A Conspiracy of Paper, which won the 2000 Edgar Award for best first novel, set Liss on a promising course that has since garnered additional accolades from many reviewers.
When it first reviewed the novel several years ago, the New York Times described it as "an evocation of English history that you can happily get lost in for days."
A Conspiracy of Paper provides a disconcertingly believable look at the immoral world of "the new finance," as Weaver and his contemporaries call the rapidly evolving business practices of their era.
In doing so, a novel set almost 300 years ago also provides a preview of what was to come in another ethically challenged era - the 21st century.
