Dr. Alexander Hoffmann, the brilliant protagonist of Robert Harris' nail-biting new thriller, "The Fear Index," understands fear, at least when it comes to hedge funds. His Geneva-based firm, which has $10 billion in assets under management, uses fear-measuring algorithms to time transactions, with great success.
How successful? As the Dow declined nearly 25 percent, Hoffmann's hedge fund grew in value by 83 percent.
"There have been two years of panic in the markets, and our algorithms thrive on panic, because human beings always behave in such predictable ways when they're frightened," Hoffmann tells a group of investors.
As the book progresses, though, Hoffmann discovers that he hasn't really understood fear in a personal way. And somebody, it seems, is determined to change that, in the course of 24 hours.
First, Hoffmann receives, apparently as an anonymous gift, an expensive first edition of Charles Darwin's "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals." Strange, but nice — until he tracks down the seller and learns that the buyer was … Hoffmann himself.
Then, just before 4 a.m., an intruder somehow manages to circumvent the elaborate security system that protects Hoffmann's newly purchased mansion. In the ensuing scuffle, the intruder knocks Hoffmann unconscious.
After Hoffmann comes to, he tells police his attacker looked exactly like one of the men pictured in Darwin's book.
"It was the illustration for the emotion of terror — an old man, his eyes wide, his toothless mouth agape," Harris writes. "Electric calipers were being applied to his facial muscles by the great French doctor Duchenne, an expert in galvanism, in order to stimulate the required expression."
Not surprisingly, the police find Hoffmann's claim dismaying.
As the sun rises, Hoffmann's day only gets worse. Among other oddities, he uncovers a large money transfer he apparently requested but now can't recall. But worst of all, the bottom seems to be falling out of the markets, and Hoffmann's hedge fund is responding in interesting ways.
"Someone was trying to screw with his mind: that was what was going on here," Harris writes. "They were trying to make him doubt his own sanity, maybe even murder him. Either that or he really was going mad."
Think of it as "Gaslight" for the hip, digital crowd.
In his previous thriller, "The Ghost," Harris documented the downfall of a political figure even casual observers recognized to be a thinly disguised version of the United Kingdom's former prime minister, Tony Blair.
Harris, a former Blair supporter, was disenchanted with the prime minister's support of the war in Iraq.
"The Fear Index" has only a single, tangential tie to British politics: It takes place on May 6, 2010, when Brits went to the polls and sent the Labour Party of Blair and his successor packing.
Harris has written a taut, beautifully paced page-turner, and as an exemplary example of its genre, it's a work of art.
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