About a decade ago, Michael Ridpath was the UK's foremost financial thriller writer. On his website, he says "In the 1990s there was a hope that the financial thriller genre could grow to be as big as legal thrillers. This didn't happen." Feeling himself to be a big fish in a small pool with a leak, he decided to switch genres (and has now become equally successful in another genre). Has the banking/financial crisis and the state of the world economy made this reasoning overall more, or less, applicable and relevant in 2012? Is an agent's instinctive reaction to receiving an otherwise acceptable query letter regarding a completed first "financial thriller" likely to be "No thanks"? Are "financial thrillers" a viable genre? In the sense that this genre could be a viable and sensible choice for a writer - with some trading experience/background - starting a new career as an author of fiction? Or would that be a probably inadvisable and potentially unfortunate choice? I'd love to know the opinions of any agents, publishers or others with a view to express.
How does that genre work? I mean is it usually like someone has some money stolen and they try to track down who got it and how, or maybe it's like the show on tv "American Greed?" Or maybe it's more legally based like Grisham's stuff? Or what about a book like the movie "The Boiler Room," would that be it? Or another, the last part of the movie "Trading Places (Dan Akroyd, Eddie Murphy)" when they set out to break the Dukes, granted that was a comedy. Depending on the story, I would definitely read it. And there's a lot of people interested in that stuff these days. I am. It might just be the time for it: We're far enough from the event (2007-2008), and the economy still really sucks no matter what they say. We're watching the absolute disappearance of the middle class! It's going to take a great book to set the genre. I say write it!
Thanks for your reply, Edward. They're thrillers set in the world of investment banking, hedge funds, foreign exchange trading, trading floors/dealing rooms, city regulators and so on. Often including international/political aspects of the global economy. Investment banks, traders, hedge funds and the rest are to financial thrillers what law firms and courts are to Grisham's legal thrillers, more or less.
problem is many people do not get high finance. so it does not make a lot of sense if they do not naturaly fallow that
james' point is valid... the world of high finance isn't easily understood by 'outsiders' and thus novels based on it do not have anywhere near as large a reader/buyer market as those of international intrigue and other crime venues... it really takes an exceptional storyteller to make a novel about banking and bankers a good read for any but the cognoscenti... but reich and erdman have done well enough with theirs, too, so it seems any well-plotted/written novel set in the rare atmosphere of the biggest of the big money venues will have as good a chance of being published as those in any other setting... and despite the probably lower total sales numbers, can still become bestsellers... i don't think the current global crisis will make such books any more popular, though it certainly offers more creative grist for a writer's mill than usual... if you start one today, however, keep in mind that it will be years before it can hit the bookstores, even with the best of luck getting an agent and publisher... so by that time, the crisis could well be over and done with, no longer be 'topical'...
