Death of a Financier — John Francis Kinsella

Tom Barton, a City mortgage broker, decides to quit his business in the wake of the subprime crisis. He arrives in Kovalam, a small tourist resort in the south of India. In the Maharaja Palace Hotel, he finds himself in the company of holidaymakers from the UK, Scandinavia and Russia. Amongst them are Stephen Parkly, the CEO of a successful City bank, and his young wife Emma, taking a well earned year end break. Emma's husband falls gravely ill with a mysterious infection, whilst in the City following the New Year holiday, his mortgage and investment bank, West Mercian Finance, is caught in a Northern Rock style crisis. Savers and small investors rush to pull their money out and the value of the bank's shares take a vertiginous plunge on the London Stock Exchange. Ryan Kavanagh, a young doctor, on holiday in the hotel with his mother and his sister Sarah, comes to Emma's aid with the help of Barton after discovering an attempted cover-up by the Indian authorities, who fear for Kerala's key business industry, as the disease threatens the resort with the tourist season in full swing. Thousands of British tourists enjoying the sun are unaware of the pending disaster in the same way many are unaware their savings about are to be wiped out in the West Mercian collapse.