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A occupation he shouldn't have taken... A woman he shouldn't have loved... A mystery he shouldn't expose...if he wants to live.

Nick Neumann had it all: a Harvard degree, a finelooking fiancée, a star-making Wall Street career.  But behind the dazzling veneer of this golden boy is a man haunted by the brutal killing of his father seventeen years before.

Now chilling new proof has implicated his father's employer, the United Swiss Bank, in the crime.  Nick doesn't know how.  Or why.  But he has a plan to find out: move to Zurich.  Work for the same bank.  Follow in his father's footsteps.  Look for the same secrets...and uncover something so shocking, so unexpected, justice may not be enough.

For as a circle of treachery tightens around him, as a woman with mysteries of her own enters his life, Nick makes another chilling discovery.  Not just regarding his father but regarding himself.  And how far he's more than willing to go to find out what happened seventeen years before--when a man passed from physical life and a conspiracy was born.

ReviewThrough the eyes of Christopher Reich, dive into the corrupt world of global high finance. In his debut novel, Reich offers a realistic and gritty "day-in-the-life" perspective on working in the world's financial mecca. For Nick Neumann, an ex-marine turned Harvard MBA with a pretty fiancée and an elite position at Morgan Stanley, life is good--until his mother's untimely death opens old wounds and rehashes questions when it comes to his father's unsolved murder. Nick wants the truth and is more than willing to sacrifice his career, love, and future for a crack at untangling the mystery surrounding his father's death. To do this, he takes a occupation at the esteemed United Swiss Bank, the venerable financial cornerstone of Geneva and his father's former employer. Before he may begin his investigation, however, disturbing events come into play: One portfolio manager is dead, another had a "nervous breakdown," and his training manager is jumping ship to cast accounts with their staunch enemy. All of the managing directors have one thing in common: they each oversaw a multimillion-dollar numbered account owned by the mysterious Pasha. If that isn't enough, the DEA steps in and orders Nick to serve up Pasha on a silver platter. Being the embodiment of American ideals, Nick takes matters into his own hands and is caught in a remorseless conspiracy that stretchings around the world and into his personal life. Peppered with murder, revenge, and first-rate espionage, Numbered Account is a thinking person's thriller, a freshening break from the old standbys.

From Library JournalDelacorte is unquestionably banking on this original novel, with domestic and alien rights already sold. Featuring the ever-intriguing Swiss banking system of numbered accounts, Reich's adventure story focuses on the ethical issues of the origin and funding actions of big "anonymous" sums. Enter ex-Marine Nicholas Neumann, who arrives at United Swiss Bank, his father's employer, to solve his murder 17 years ago when Nick was a child. Nick's quest throws him into an international web of hostile takeovers, drugs, and arms sales (including a nuclear weapon). A potential problem is the stereotypic portrayal of the necessary villain as a remorseless Muslim. The novel is unquestionably a male fantasy, for after he conquers all, Neumann returns to the States to reclaim the fiancee who dropped him when he left for Zurich. This has almost all the elements of a best seller: murder, exotic locales, high finance, and danger, but there is breathtakingly little sex; does the violence substitute? For public libraries with a huge demand for thrillers.
-?Rebecca Sturm Kelm, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib, Highland Heights
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus ReviewsReich's debut adventure story couldn't be more timely: A brash American insider tracks down the endlessly dirty high-level mysteries in the Swiss banking establishment. Nicholas Neumann's left his dream occupation with Morgan Stanley to take a trainee position with the United Swiss Bank for just one reason: to find out who killed his father, a USB veteran shot to death by someone he trusted shortly after opening USB's Los Angeles branch. Nick is so consumed by a thirst for revenge that he's even broken his engagement in order to settle in frigid Zurich, where he's convinced the origins of his father's murder lie buried. But before he may dope out the meaning of the cryptic final entries in his father's 1979 daybook, he's snarled in the bank's own intrigues. Neighboring Adler Bank, looking to seize control of the USB, is buying up shares with a bottomless purse of cash, and each USB stalwart is being asked to do his utmost- -even if it means committing fraud on a massive scale--to prevent the hostile takeover. And Nick, who's been in Zurich for only six weeks, is speedily in the middle of the action, thanks to a bit of initiative that brings him to the attention of USB Director Wolfgang Kaiser. What started out as a quest for personal revenge turns--as in Reich's apparent model, Allan Folsom's The Day After Tomorrow (1994)--into a monstrous plot of global proportions; and, as in Folsom, the story loses believability to the extent that it forsakes it is hero's vendetta for the fate of nations. Loses credibility, but never excitement, as the corpses pile up in a crescendo of nuclear weapons, betrayals, and billions of Swiss francs. A sleek, deliriously overscaled wish-fulfillment fantasy perfectly judged to persuade you that all today's bestloved enemies--treacherous Arabs, warlike ex-Soviet renegades, crusade capitalists, Swiss bankers--are in bed together with the man who killed your father. ($300,000 ad/promo; Book-of-the-Month Club selection; author tour; radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Most helpful client reviews

31 of 34 humans found the following review helpful.
Revenge and terror: a delicious concoction
By D. Ross
Nick Neumann has what, at introductory glance, appears to be the perfective life. The former U.S. Marine just graduated from Harvard Business School and has joined the fast-paced world of Wall Street. His girlfriend is beautiful, the scion of an fabulously wealthy family. But Nick does have one problem: the unsolved murder of his father weighs to a great extent on his mind.

His father, murdered almost twenty years ago, worked for the secretive Swiss bank USB. And so Nick decides to follow in his footsteps: to move to Switzerland, join USB, and determine whether the trail may be followed or whether's it's gone cold.

Within days of joining USB, Nick finds himself entangled in a nightmarish conflict. The "Pasha", USB's premier client, is moving ever larger sums of cash through the bank in seemingly nonsensical fashion. The DEA, investigating large-scale cash transfers through USB, begins squeezing Nick for information. And an beautiful vice president at the bank seems to be paying very close attention to Nick's activities.

This is Reich's original book and is, plainly put, masterful. While it is length (750 pages) is daunting, Reich's firsthand psychological result of perception learning and reasoning of the Swiss banking industry is valuable and enlightening. I may closely guarantee that you'll be swept into this ambitious and fulfilling story: revenge and terror mixed into a near-perfect concoction.

19 of 21 humans found the following review helpful.
Entertaining but not exceptionally memorable
By B. McEwan
This novel was compelling sufficient to keep me reading through until the end, even even though it ran to over 700 pages. That said, however, Numbered Account is not in particular unforgettable in terms of plot, characters or suspense -- all things that make reading for amusement a suitable pursuit.

Nick Neumann is a likeable sufficient character, but he in some way didn't inspire a lot of passion from me in terms of whether or not he survives his circumstance and goes on to live a generative life. *Spoiler coming up.* And the fact that he ends up with his former fiance, Anna, is neither surprising nor very interesting since we never genuinely get to recognise her and she never genuinely appears in the book.

I'm just not that curious when it comes to Swiss banking procedures to rate this story any higher than a 3. This is the kind of paperback that, ought to you find it lying around the vacation condo on a rainy day, you would pick up and read, but don't go out of your way to buy it.

Maybe Reich's other books are more engaging than this one, given that other reviewers have awarded more stars than I. Somehow, though, I doubt I'll ever find out because Numbered Account just didn't get my number, so to speak.

12 of 13 humans found the following review helpful.
Very good book
By A
"Numbered Account" is a very good book: the plot is interesting and the more you go on with it, the more immediate you want to turn pages. Although the beginning may be a bit slow, Reich makes his best when he describes the Swiss bank system, and it is closely as if you could listen the steps of somebody entering one of these huge Swiss banks that look like ancient temples with their own codes and laws. The characters have sufficient depth and it is utterly intriguing to enter the world of the private banking in Switzerland. The country is well described, while the aroused conflict of the main reputation is nicely outlined. It is apparent that the author has a great cognition of Switzerland, it is banking system, and he has outstanding skill because he managed to mix a potential boring theme like banking with a pacing personal war of Nicholas Neumann, the main character. Definitely a book that is worth to be purchased and read.

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