Hello, my lovely peeps🐣!
It's a nice happy Hump Day and it's also my stop on the blog tour for Zero Ri$k by Simon Hayes! I'll be sharing my review and yeesh, talk about a scary eggs in a single basket lesson. A chonky book that didn't stand a chance with me because I inhaled it. It's been a LONG while since I was so into a book that hours go by without me noticing. As a jittery person that generally can't even sit still long enough to play several video game chapters, getting me to stay glued in one spot, engrossed in a book, is like...a superman accomplishment (so well done, Mr. Hayes!).
Without further ado, my thoughts on Zero Ri$k by Simon Hayes!
Title: Zero Ri$k
Author: Simon Hayes
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Financial Thriller, Political Thriller
Length: 780 pages
Goodreads: [HERE]
Amazon: [HERE]
Disclaimer: An e-copy of this book was provided to me as part of the blog tour. This does not impact the review and all opinions are my own. Thank you to the author, Simon Hayes, and the LitPR team for the copy!
When customer complaints on Christmas Eve about tenfold inflated bank balances herald not early gifts, nor a botched system upgrade, but the most sophisticated cyber attack in history, National Bank Chief Operating Officer Rob Tanner finds himself in the eye of a 'Black Swan' storm no one predicted, but anyone could have anticipated
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23 December 2024… Rob Tanner should have been enjoying a rare day off from his life-consuming work as Chief Operating Officer at one of the country's largest banks. But a panicked phone call from a senior colleague forces him to put his Christmas plans on ice: more than a thousand of the bank's accounts have seen their balances increased by a factor of ten. Exactly ten.
Tanner enlists the help of brilliant American cyber security expert Ashley Markham, but the attacks only worsen: bank balances rise remorselessly and spread to all the nation's banks. The only clues to the hacker's intentions are cryptic daily emails, centred on Hieronymus Bosch's medieval representation of the seven deadly sins—and packed with colourful artistic and cultural references—taunting Tanner and the newly incumbent Prime Minister, James Allen.
With financial markets—and the very world as he knows it—on the brink of collapse, Tanner races against the clock to decode not just the bizarre emails but their deeper meaning, and the implications for who he can really trust. All the while, his former boss "The Toad" is seeking revenge... and answers of his own.
This enthralling, multi-layered debut follows the story of a disillusioned banker facing unthinkable financial Armageddon, where money has no value, stock and bond prices are meaningless, and the economy is destroyed. Can Tanner unravel the mystery of the hacker's obsession with Bosch, sin and retribution before modern society returns to the dark ages?
Imagine waking up to your account with an extra zero. Great, right? It's like a nice little Christmas gift from the banks. Except, you know banks aren't so generous with such things…so it must be a glitch? Go figures, big companies tend to bug out every now and then. I mean, what a hell of a glitch, but hey! Big companies mean big IT teams so you're sure that before your Keurig even finishes pumping out your lifeblood, everything will be all fixed and dandy for the holiday break. But what if it doesn't get fixed? What if it's the beginning of a crisis that brings the UK's financial systems down to their knees.
Ten days…the clock starts ticking…Christmas Eve or rather, the beginning of the end.
A computer genius presents to the room a fatal flaw in the security system. Her efforts are thanked and rewarded by being ignored, threatened with legal action, and then fired in front of everyone. A haunting prologue and a forewarning of things to come. Because when things have been running on peeling plasters for ages and ages, eventually the dam will crack open. Duct tape can only do so much.
Zero Ri$k is incredibly well-written. The story opens up with an ominous warning before it gets ignored, and forgotten for years. Not even. It's practically buried and hidden away. Nobody outside the meeting room shall know of this demonstration. The fear and tension in the room are palpable. Being early to meetings means that there tends to be some idle mingling and small-talk, but there's no "Hi Bob, sure is cold today," here. Even without Martin Kellett's, the Toad, presence, the room is pin-drop silent and the story's tone is set. The atmosphere was perfect from the beginning of the book and no scene, after, was short of intense emotions that leaked right through the pages, sending shivers up my spine. The overwhelming pressure of upper management and board. That was just the beginning. Just the prologue!
Throughout the book, this never subsides. Whether it was another email from the anonymous perpetrator, resulting in everyone's blood running cold, or the intimacy of two characters, you feel it all as the reader. The urgency and desperation of the crisis and events, the panic of characters that lead straight to your own spike in adrenaline and fears. Engaging, engrossing, and compelling; this is certainly a book you pick up and forget the world around you exists because you're right there with the characters through all of it.
And it's not just the atmosphere and tone either, the characters are gold by themselves. Be warned, there are quite a number of characters that I started to keep a notepad of who everyone was, their titles, and their roles in their companies and the book. You'd think that with such a large cast, that people and personalities meld together, but it wasn't the case here. Intricately designed, everyone from the bank driver, Tommy Steele to the heavy-drinking "communications supremo", Pattie Boyle, from the Prime Minister (James Allen)'s Chief of Staff, LJ, to even National Bank's CEO's (Martin Kellett, a.k.a. the "Toad") personal assistant Christina, it didn't matter if your role is to be Zero Ri$k's main character, Rob Tanner, or any of the other characters…you had a role in all of this fiasco. Everyone plays a part. It didn't matter if your position in the company or country was small and minor, your hand played a major impact on the events that occurred. And for that, these characters all are incredibly well-crafted. We learn of their backgrounds (even the side characters), what makes them tick, what motivates them, the secrets that they keep. Their personalities are bold and strong, their fears, desperation, irrational decisions, and everything that makes a character whole, are all so realistic. Their details made the book so much more immersive and only made me fall deeper in love with this book, even if it also means that I can feel the ugly narcissism and slimness of certain characters through into the real world.
The story was fun and intriguing from the start. I'm sure I've come across one or two finance-related thrillers before, but nothing on this level. From the IT presentation in the beginning to the intricate details relating to artworks and the seven deadly sins, this book may have been long…but it sure didn't feel like it. The plot felt explosive and exciting to experience. I did make a random and fun guess about who the perpetrator behind the bank attack was, and I was right, but who they truly were and how exactly they had been hiding, blew me away even if the original guess had been predictable.
This has been an amazing read. My Kindle told me I had over a hundred highlights and annotations, but even by the first five chapters, I knew there would be no way for me to do Zero Ri$k justice in a single, simply little review. A fantastic and well-written debut novel from Simon Hayes, engrossing and dark, this has certainly been a gripping novel that kept me up at night. If you enjoy detailed scenes and characters, escape-room-worthy riddles, and a good financial and cyber-thriller, Zero Ri$k is one I'd recommend. You'll fall in and climb out only when the noon sun pokes for the midnight moon to wake.
Simon Hayes is an award-winning former headhunter and investment banker. His finance career took him from his home city London, where he was a top-ranked securities analyst in the Institutional Investor and Extel surveys, to the US, Hong Kong and Japan. Search led Simon back to Tokyo, where he was recognised as the "Best Headhunting Executive" in Japan by Asiamoney then, as head of a leading London-based Financial Services practice, into the City's most exclusive boardrooms. He wrote Zero Risk, his first novel, whilst creating the rubriqs people skills system, and he spent much of 2023 in Zimbabwe on a major fraud case. Born and raised in West London, Simon was the first member of his family to attend university, graduating from Trinity Hall, Cambridge with a degree in Law.
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