by David Liss. Liss is at his best when buried deep in the bowels of eighteenth-century finance, as he was in his Edgar-winning debut, A Conspiracy of Paper (2000), which starred Benjamin Weaver, a British thief-taker (recoverer of stolen goods) in a thriller about London's notorious Exchange Market. This time he sticks with the period and the financial milieu but moves the action across the ocean to America in the years immediately following the revolution. It's a tumultuous time, with Hamiltonians sparring with Jeffersonians, and Hamilton himself hoping to secure his position with the establishment of the National Bank. Into the mix comes Ethan Saunders, a celebrated spy during the war but now living a dissolute life in Philadelphia as a drunkard and gambler. Attempting to come to the aid of his former lover, the wife of a stock trader and associate of Hamilton's, Saunders falls in with the whiskey rebels, backcountry moonshiners furious with Hamilton's whiskey tax and ready with the help of the wily Joan Maycott, wife of one of the whiskey boys to foment trouble in the financial markets, possibly causing the failure of Hamilton's bank. Like all of Liss' novels, this one has a remarkably complex plot, but it's so rich in fascinating detail about the early days of stock trading, about the Federalist movement, and about whiskey making that one hardly minds getting lost in the plot machinations now and again. But Liss brings it all together in the end, uniting multiple narrators and different time lines in a bravura finish. Yes, Saunders is an American version of Benjamin Weaver, but who's complaining? A raucous mix of historical fiction and action-adventure thriller. --Booklist.
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