Review: The Candidate
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 6, 2014
Nicholas Thorneycroft wakes up in Luxembourg unable to remember the previous night and his female company.  This intelligent thriller novella catches our attention from the start.Nicholas manages to find his landlady's little dog huddled on the apartment building's roof, but cannot find his own office key card. As he occasionally handles sensitive documents, he'd rather not lose it. He begins to suspect that he was drugged.Luxembourg handles high finance and European projects from its French-speaking low tax base. The location is thoroughly described, from the one English pub to the icy roads on the hill leading down to the Petrusse River and the floodlit castle. Nick is a rounded character who started as a sports writer and now headhunts for a major firm. He's been asked to hire a female Russian banker at several times his own salary. Nick reckons that this glamorous candidate Yekaterina may be the woman who came home with him, while a Russian firm Xanant is considering buying out his own firm. He decides that background research is needed.Nick's past girlfriend turns up when he's preoccupied; she seems emotionally unstable, and that's before thugs smash down his apartment door.  The characters just keep coming, sharply written and believable, as even Nick's own bosses would rather the prospect of bonuses than take their recent hire's word for it that something sinister is in progress.  Banking, the author shows us, is multinational, occasionally corrupt and corrupting.Daniel Pembrey is writing about places and jobs where he has worked, just as he did in 'The Woman Who Stopped Traffic', which is set in California. With his flair for realism and insider knowledge he doesn't just push the door open, he throws it wide to reveal the good, the bad and the dangerous.