The Bearer Plot — Owen Sela

"The Bearer Plot has all the hallmarks of superb originality, nearly unbearable tension, characterisation that conveys to the reader protagonists of flesh and blood, and the storyline (set against unhackneyed backgrounds that communicate that fact author Sela is a much-travelled man) will be hailed as something not attempted by a thick-ear novelist before.

"A part-time bondman called Nicholas Maasten tangles with some pretty valuable stamps and what looked like easy money to him turned out to be quite the reverse. All he had to do, he thought, was sell the damned things, then take his cut. But the stamp-carrying act involves him in mayhem, skulduggery, some shady politics that embrace an ex-Nazi, and a hell of a lot of hot money in the shape of bearer bonds (which, as you may know, are paid to whoever has possession of them).

"A beautiful woman acts mysteriously and if anyone wants a fiction that tells all about that equally mysterious thing, money - and the way it can be transferred from person to person and country to country, legally and illegally - The Bearer Plot is their cash and carry book."