A woman running a CIA safe house in Alaska garners unwelcome attention while trying to decipher a program written by her late software-engineer husband in this debut thriller.
It’s been several months since University of Alaska finance professor Kate Adams’ husband, Max, vanished in Singapore, only to later turn up dead from an apparent drowning. She decides to give herself closure by taking a sabbatical from the university to focus on a couple of research projects. Her CIA pal and former lover, Brad Oakley, however, has a different plan for her. They’d reunited in Washington, D.C., just prior to Max’s disappearance, and he now hopes to make Kate a CIA safe-house manager. She reluctantly agrees, mainly because the agency can provide data for her research as well as provide her with materials that were recovered during the investigation into Max’s death. She spends the bulk of her time at the somewhat isolated cabin, battling harsh weather, maintaining order (which isn’t an easy feat with some guests, including the abrasive Delgado), and tending to her vegetable garden. She finally peruses Max’s intricate computer program and links it to companies that are “major players in the financial industry” and make millions of trades daily. Then a group of mysterious men, looking for Kate, locates and attacks the safe house. Bell’s story thrives due its resolute protagonist. Although Kate rarely talks or thinks about Max (who’s more a catalyst than a character), she’s sympathetic as an introvert whose free-market stance during an economic crisis affords her few friends. Bell takes her time establishing the stellar, remote setting; indeed, Kate doesn’t delve into Max’s program until just past the story’s halfway point. She and Brad, however, stir up drama with their intimate relationship, as he visits the safe house often when dropping off guests. It soon becomes abundantly clear that someone’s spying on her at the cabin, and the intensity ramps up in the final act. nThere are also teases of potential future events, as when Kate, while ducking baddies, promises herself that she’ll someday buy and learn how to use a sniper rifle.
Bell’s protagonist holds her own in her first outing and will surely be ready for more harrowing circumstances in a potential sequel.
University of Alaska professor, Holly A. Bell, best known for her criticism of Michael Lewis’ ‘Flash Boys’ and commentary on high frequency trading and financial market regulation has chosen global-scale financial market conspiracy as the subject of her debut novel, Trading Salvos.
Palmer, Alaska (PRWEB) June 16, 2016 -- In the spirit of the Henry Spearman novels written by University of Virginia professors William L. Breit and Kenneth G. Elzinga, who used crime novels as a means of demonstrating economic principles, Professor Holly A. Bell has chosen fiction as the medium to explore potential threats to global financial market security. Released June 11th, "Trading Salvos: A Kate Adams Novel" has already spent time on Amazon's Financial Thriller and Organized Crime bestseller lists during its premiere week.
Trading Salvos is a genre-bending novel that mixes a suspenseful murder mystery and financial crime thriller with elements of non-fiction plucked from today’s headlines. The artful combination leaves the reader wondering ‘what if?’.
Starting from what she knows best, Dr. Bell’s protagonist is an Alaskan finance professor named Kate Adams who escapes to the remote Alaska wilderness following her husband’s mysterious death to get back on her feet and complete a research sabbatical. But even in her isolation she can’t shake one nagging question: What was her husband working on before he died? As Kate continues her research into unusual financial phenomena across the globe, a complex financial conspiracy emerges and suddenly her husband’s death doesn’t look so accidental.
Dr. Bell is currently working on a second book in the series. Trading Salvos is available on Amazon .
Holly A. Bell is an Associate Professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is also a consulting scholar on financial market structure and regulatory issues and has contributed policy research to the CATO Institute and Mercatus Center and commentary to The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, and American Banker.
