Robert Harris's "The Fear Index" makes a thriller out of a man sitting at a computer

Robert Harris, the author of 'The Ghost,' discusses his new financial page-turner "The Fear Index" and his predilection for writing about ancient Rome.

Robert Harris can make a thriller out of just about anything. Even a guy sitting at a computer staring at numbers.

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Sure, the British author began his fiction career with a traditional foray into alternate history, imagining what Germany and the world might have been like had Hitler survived and won the war. Since his World War II best-sellers (follow-up "Enigma" traces the British quest to break secret Nazi naval codes), Harris has delved into subjects ranging from the plight of an aqueduct engineer in ancient Rome sitting on the edge of Vesuvius to the deceptions discovered by a ghost writer for a British prime minister modeled on Tony Blair.

More recently, Harris has written two novels based on the political intrigue of Cicero and ancient Rome. The final book in the trilogy is expected next year.

At the moment, Harris is very much in a 21st-century state of mind with the recent American publication of "The Fear Index." Set in Geneva, the novel is a contemporary version of Frankenstein. This time the monster is artificial intelligence run amok in the ever-volatile world of hedge funds and global finance.

Dr. Alexander Hoffman, the protagonist of "The Fear Index," is the architect of an algorithm that is making his firm, and its clients, piles of money. He is the silent partner in the operation, never heard from in public, and viewed as a mysterious figure.

This setting gives Harris ample room to explore the fragile framework of the financial system, a world governed by relentless analysis, trades, and short sales driven by computers as much as anything. Hoffman is the kind of man who wakes in the middle of the night and grabs his version of a security blanket.

Here is Hoffman as Harris describes him early in the book:

?He reached for his mobile. It was one of a batch specially produced for the hedge fund that could encrypt certain sensitive phone calls and emails. To avoid disturbing Gabrielle ? she detested this habit of his even more than she hated him smoking ? he switched it on under the duvet and briefly checked the Profit & Loss screen for Far Eastern trading ??

From there, the mash-up of Bill Gates, Charles Darwin, and Victor Frankenstein takes flight, bolstered by unidentified malevolent forces, Hoffman?s frayed nerves and an invention that overwhelms everything in its wake. Hoffman Investment Technologies aims to make people, even its brilliant quantitative analysts, superfluous, if not obsolete.

Company computer screens bear the ominous slogan: ?THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL HAVE NO PAPER/THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL CARRY NO INVENTORY/THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE WILL BE ENTIRELY DIGITAL/THE COMPANY OF THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/0cKSFc9ruYk/Robert-Harris-s-The-Fear-Index-makes-a-thriller-out-of-a-man-sitting-at-a-computer

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