Jonas Brand has recently been made a video journalist for his local TV station. He fell in to the role after having hung around the studio as a general hand, working on odd jobs until he was asked to step in for a sick colleague to film a news report. After that, he was given the job of chasing celebrities in and out of cars and hotels with a video camera – one step-up from paparazzi – until now.

He’s on a train journey from Zurich to Basel when a story that could make his career falls into his lap. A passenger jumps out of an open door near his carriage. Pushing through the crowd and flashing his new press credentials, Brand tries to build a sense of the events but it appears to be little more than a failed financier suiciding. Shelving the footage, he continues to try to find a backer for his pet project, Montecristo, a film about a dotcom millionaire jailed in Thailand on trumped-up drug charges – a project no-one else is interested in.

When he goes to get some change, Jonas notices that two of the bank notes have the same serial number. The bank assures him both notes are genuine. He arranges an interview with the CEO of Coromag, a company that prints money for the banks but which is on the brink of financial disaster. As the mystery deepens, Jonas finds that his bank notes, the footage from the train and his safety are all intricately linked through a web of lies that threaten to bring down Coromag and possibly the central banks of Switzerland.

Martin Suter’s award-winning novel, translated from the German, draws the reader in to a backroom world of finance speculation, currency trading and corporate deals gone awry. The story picks up pace as it progresses. If you can get past some of the flatly drawn supporting characters, it will be a worthwhile holiday read for summer.

Reviewed by David Johnson