Join us Tuesday evening, April 21st at 7pm for a reading by local author Mark T. Sullivan.
His new book, Triple Cross, is scheduled for release on April 14th.
Market Manipulation is Subject of New Thriller
Terrorists Put World’s Wealthiest on Trial in TRIPLE CROSS
It’s New Year’s Eve at the Jefferson Club, a luxurious private ski resort in the mountains of southwestern Montana. Some of the world’s wealthiest business leaders and a U.S. senator are gathered for a private party. As expensive champagne flows and multibillion dollar deals are sealed, the celebration is shattered by black-hooded intruders – members of a well-armed militia called the Third Position Army, who threaten to put the revelers on trial for crimes against humanity, live on the Internet, for the world to see. (www.thirdpositionjustice.net)
Thus begins TRIPLE CROSS, internationally bestselling author Mark T. Sullivan’s heart-stopping thriller from St. Martin’s Press in which capitalism and antiglobalism collide with deadly consequences. With a perfect blend of suspense, dark humor and explosive action, this skillfully crafted novel raises compelling questions about who the real criminals are, in a world where financial markets are manipulated on an unfathomable scale and a powerful few profit at the expense of many. TRIPLE CROSS will be released nationwide on April 14.
“I do not think that capitalism is inherently evil, but I came to believe, when I was researching and writing Triple Cross, that there were excesses going on that could not only taint the reputation of capitalism, but buckle the markets,” Sullivan says.
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“That’s exactly what happened last September, when the market crashed and we found out that people were playing hard and fast with the rules,” he continues. “The so-called ‘Smart People’ thought that there were no repercussions to their strategies as long as they made money. Obviously, their unethical and sometimes illegal business practices had widespread and brutal consequences. People lost homes, their jobs, and their savings. Kids stopped attending the colleges they wanted to attend. Philanthropic organizations went bankrupt and shut their doors. Global investors began to rightly look at the American markets and the institutions around them with a skeptical and jaundiced eye.”
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In TRIPLE CROSS, Sullivan details financial techniques used by many high-stakes investors before the crash. He paints a portrait of how vast fortunes are sometimes made – or lost – with the click of a computer mouse or a shrewdly timed phone call. An award-winning newspaper and magazine journalist who once covered the futures market in Chicago for Reuters Ltd, Sullivan was already familiar with market manipulation. He further researched his subject by consulting with investment professionals, who “gamed” with him to create the financial scenarios that drive the story.
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Bestselling author Robert Crais praises TRIPLE CROSS as a “…smart, prescient thriller that makes one wonder why the bottom really dropped out of the stock market. The story snaps and twists like a cracking whip… I defy you to guess the ending.” Booklist says, “Terrorism meets reality TV. Triple Cross is crisply written, breathlessly paced, suspenseful . . . an almost addictive page turner.”
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Although TRIPLE CROSS seems, in some ways, to parallel recent world events, Sullivan says that the similarities are purely coincident. He finished writing his final draft nine months before the Wall Street meltdown, eleven months before terrorists seized two luxury hotels in Mumbai, India, and twelve months before the $50 billion Bernard Madoff investment scandal came to light.
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“There is a place in Montana that I patterned the Jefferson Club after,” he says. “In some ways it was emblematic of the excesses of that time, a super-private ski resort for the rich and powerful that cost millions to join. I knew some of the wealthiest people in the world stayed there, and I started thinking, ‘What if a place like that got attacked?’ At the same time I was becoming convinced that people who were very shrewd could manipulate the financial markets. I put the two scenarios together, and out came Triple Cross.”
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Mark T. Sullivan has written six previous, critically acclaimed and bestselling novels: The Serpent’s Kiss, The Purification Ceremony, Labyrinth, The Fall Line, Hard News, and Ghost Dance. The newest, TRIPLE CROSS, is arguably his most timely. Sullivan also considers it among his best.
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“I was as shocked as anyone who’s read the book by the fact that the real stock market crash of 2008 was caused in part by some of the same risky financial strategies and shaky business ethics I describe in the novel,” Sullivan says. “But at the same time, I felt vindicated by the crash. Not only had I been right about the tottering financial markets, but I’d been right to sell every equity I owned months before the bottom fell out.”
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TRIPLE CROSS is scheduled to be released by St. Martin’s Press in April, 2009. More information is available at www.marktsullivan.com and www.stmartins.com.
