‘The Bermuda Bond’: Interview with the author
Q. What is this book about?
A. It’s a financial thriller set on the Atlantic island of Bermuda in the mid-1990s.
Q. What is the inspiration behind the book?
A. Because of my own experience of Bermuda – both for business and pleasure, as well as my fascination with its history and tax haven status, I’ve long thought that it would make a very interesting setting for a novel exposing financial jiggery-pokery beneath the surface.
Q. What can you tell us about the main characters?
A. The main linking character is Owen Ash who runs a conference company and he has interesting friends on the island who help him unravel the corrupt practices of some key immoral characters who operate in the financial community on Bermuda.
One of his friends, Dorian Miller works as a Curator at the Royal Naval Dockyard and another, Doug Bonsall is a journalist on the island’s newspaper. The main rogues are Mike Peters and Wallace Copthorne who are partners in an accountancy firm as well as directors of a couple of crooked firms.
Q. The book is set in the 1990s Why?
A. This was pre the revelations from subsequent major scoops like The Panama Papers and The Paradise Papers – both of which lifted the lid on the nefarious activities of professional advisers and their wealthy individual clients moving money around the world. However, the activities revealed in those papers had obviously taken place over a great many years. Although later cases, including the more recent Jeffrey Epstein scandal, have shed yet more light on financial scams and deceit, I wanted to go back a bit in time and expose what could have been happening beneath behind the veil of apparent respectability.
Q. How did you choose the title?
A. The Bermuda Bond was chosen as the title for the book to represent not only the particular form of investment opportunity being exploited by the villains in the piece, but also the bond that can exist between friends and lovers, or with places.
Q. What research did you do for the book?
A. I drew extensively on various works of reference for the naval history, a diligent study of various financial schemes and tax dodges and also on the information gathered when I visited Bermuda and the knowledge I gained at the time.
Q. Do you have any plans for a sequel?
A. It is meant to sit alongside my earlier novel, Spy Without a Cause, in terms of style. That was set in the Far East and is a thriller in a similar Eric Ambler vein – a businessman gets caught up events he can’t control. However, The Bermuda Bond sits on its own and I’ve no plans for a sequel, although, now you mention it …