First novelist Christopher Reich can open his own numbered account with the reported near-million-dollar advance paid by Dell/Delacorte senior vice-president Leslie Schnur for Numbered Account, a thriller set in the world of Swiss banks and centering around a young man's search for his banker father's killer and some modern-day financial shenanigans. Reich, himself an international banker who for many years worked for the Union Bank of Switzerland, was repped in the deal by agent Richard Pine.

And for some real-life Swiss bank drama, Carol Publishing Group publisher Steven Schragis is rushing out a 50,000-copy first printing of Hitler's Secret Bankers: The Myth of Swiss Neutrality During the Holocaust by London Times correspondent Adam LeBor. The book will hit stores April 25 and beats out other books on related subjects, including Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art (HarperCollins, May), Tom Bower's Nazi Gold: Switzerland, the Nazis and Their Plunder of the Innocents (HarperCollins, June) and Isabel Vincent's Blood Money: How the Swiss Banks Bankrolled the Nazis and their Final Solution Against the Jews (Morrow, Oct.). Still to come is another eagerly awaited book in this genre by Richard Z. Chesnoff. Doubleday editor Eric Major plans to publish in early 1998.