Originally published in the winter 1999 issue of Global Custody Review magazine
The Butchers' Ball
by Mark B Cohen
Hodder & Stoughton
Pp 375; £16.99
ISBN --340-71298-8
We don't normally review fiction but will make an exception where the action or the author is connected to the financial world. Both are in this case, the author being one of the many Marks who while away the working day at Baring Asset Management in Bishopsgate, the main action taking place in an organisation which sounds very familiar.
Readers of his previous novel, Brass Monkeys, will recognise the style and elcome the return of characters such as Will Cloud, the pot-smoking Irish detective, and populist television presenter Candida Blitz. Workmates are no doubt having great fun working out who's based on whom. New readers will enjoy The Butchers' Ball on its own merits, and for its fond evocations of City life, past and present.
Mark B Cohen is the latest in a growing line of City of London-based financial careerists to produce a work of fiction that probably pales by comparison with reality. Certain passages capture perfectly the nostalgia that some of us still feel for the good old days in the City.
Cohen compares and contrasts the old ways and the new ways, highlighting deftly the attractions and drawbacks of each. Some of the similes are a touch laboured for this reader's personal liking, but the writer does produce a number of phrases and metaphors to be proud of. "When I arrived, that department wasn't even washing its face. Now it's cleaning its fucking teeth and tucking itself up in bed for the night," for example, from Butchers Bank's hard-assed managing director Greg Kurdell. The passages relating to the Hoodwink Encounters website are especially enjoyable, and show the writer has done his research thoroughly.
The Butchers' Ball will briefly assuage the pain of commuting, or help the reader make it through an interminable meeting or two. Any sour grapes detected in this review are attributable purely to the reviewer's own jealousy at not having been able to persuade a publisher to take his own jottings seriously.
