Book Review: Bankers Town by Joel Hames

by Jo · Published 2015/12/10 · Updated 2017/03/14

Bankers Town: A Spellbinding Look into the Fast-Paced World of Banking

I found the first half of Bankers Town to be a little slow. There are several technical banking references such as securitisation, hedging, and swaps, all of which took me a while to grasp. The pace picks up quite dramatically in the second half and there are several unexpected twists in the plot.

Joel Hames has an amiable, easy to read voice and it works well in the first person. The characters he has created are believable and even likeable, and that is no mean feat. They are the sort of people I would imagine would be involved in these sorts of fields.

What I most enjoyed about Bankers Town is that it affirms many of my own beliefs that when you sell nothing for something, there are going to be consequences. I also quite like the ending, which was a little unexpected.

There is a fair bit of technical detail, but Bankers Town is a very good read and provides a fantastic insight into a world I know very little about.