The Birth of the Financial Thriller

Exploring the genesis and evolution of the financial thriller genre, this book investigates its emergence from Paul Erdman's seminal work, The Billion Dollar Sure Thing, published in 1973. Delving into the socio-economic backdrop of the 1970s, characterized by the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and oil crises, it contextualizes the genre's development within the tumultuous landscape of global finance. The four analytical chapters are organized around four key aspects of the genre – theme, character, plot and pedagogy/morality – and deal with authors such as Arthur Hailey, Michael M. Thomas and Jeffrey Archer, in addition to Erdman. Combining literary analysis, genre theory and economic history, The Birth of the Financial Thriller demonstrates how the financial thrillers of the 1970s were not only fictions of financialization; the financial thriller was also a fiction, or a genre, for the financialized published industry. As such, the book argues that this popular, even vulgar, genre offers a window into a pivotal moment of financial expansion in the 1970s, and, in doing so, also illuminates our financialized present. Ultimately, the book shows that the ultimate thriller is finance capital itself.