My novel, that is – not my laundering. I don’t normally do this, as I like to reserve this blog for serious matters ML and AML (apart from next Tuesday, when I think I’ll write about dogs), but I feel that today I can make a small exception and self-promote my new novel – because it contains money laundering!
Some of you may have read my first novel, “Fatal Forgery”, which was published last year and is set in London (and Gibraltar) in the 1820s, and has as its hero the magistrates’ constable Sam Plank, and as its central crime, forgery (I think the title rather hints at this). Well, I just couldn’t leave poor Sam tramping around London on his own, so he now has a new adventure which is published today – yes, this very day – and called “The Man in the the Canary Waistcoat”. (Although I’ve given the Amazon link for simplicity, those of you in Cambridge and London might prefer to lay your hands on a copy at Heffers or David’s in Cambridge, or Hammicks on Fleet Street in London.) This time there are four crimes for him to grapple with and – crucially – money laundering rears its ugly head. It wasn’t called money laundering, of course, back in 1825, but that’s what it was: a criminal trying to make his proceeds of crime look like legitimate money. And Sam, equipped only with a natty uniform, fine side-whiskers and a rather resourceful wife, has to work out what to do about it.
I should warn you, however, that this historical financial crime is rather addictive: I have already decided on the themes of the next two Plank mysteries, and you can be sure that money laundering will be needed more and more…
I hate money laundering 