Gold

This is an entertaining, though ultimately overblown, ride through high-stakes financial skulduggery in the gold-trading corridors of Switzerland, South Africa, New York, London and Moscow. At some point in the near future, Andrew Dumesnil, a reporter for a financial news network, gets a major scoop when one of his stringers reports that revolutionaries have incapacitated South African gold mines. Gold prices go through the roof as Pretoria confirms the report but, strangely, gold supplies seem to keep up with demand. As certain of Dumesnil's associates are found dead or unaccountably incommunicado, he begins to get the queasy feeling that he's been duped. He sets off to investigate firsthand. While his adventures on the gold trail are exciting, a too-neat resolution not only irks the reader but fails to fully resolve the mystery (``The worst had happened and life continued.''). Delamaide, a reporter for a financial news network based in Paris segues between boardrooms and newsrooms with a knowledgeable air but, all too often, supposedly intelligent people make banal, breathlessly ingenuous conversation about the imminent collapse of the world's economy. (Oct.)