Fourth Estate skulduggery

Tim Waterstone is the man who set up the bookshop chain in 1982, so you might expect him to have read a few books, and be OK at writing them. In fact, he’s more a businessman than a writer. He began life as a broker in Calcutta, before becoming marketing manager for Allied Breweries and W. H. Smith.

But it turns out that Waterstone is rather a skilled thriller writer; his publicity people are doing him a disservice in their promotional literature by comparing him to Jeffrey Archer (the novel’s gallumphing Archeresque title apart).

He has wisely chosen two worlds he knows about to set his thriller in — business and publishing. It’s a thinly disguised milieu he’s dealing with, too. What might the big bookselling chain, Waterwell’s, be based on? Which merchant bank could he be referring to when he talks about Warings — ‘old money, old establishment, shitty old Warings’? And who does Rod Tadlock, the maverick Australian newspaper owner with a taste for corporate takeovers, remind one of?