Dangerous wealth

In the 1860s, the Pilasters were one of the largest families of bankers. Their financial transactions ranged from the City of London to the distant colonies. The family had been enriched continuously for decades, and their loss was ultimately caused by a woman’s greed, lust for power, and greed. Augusta Pilaster, who went to the rich Pilaster boy out of interest, is deceiving until she becomes the grandmother of the family. From the background, she manages the affairs of the bank through her easily influenced and lazy husband, her undisguised goal of getting her weak and spoiled son, Edward, into the bank’s board of directors. His cunning and unscrupulous manipulations will ultimately bankrupt the bank. Hugh Pilaster, the poor relative, an orphan of a bankrupt banker, is the brain of the family, who with his cleverness and ethics make the bank more and more successful, thus endangering his ideas about Augusta’s son. Hugh’s “weak point” is that for her, women who can take a job can only be imagined as a partner, she also chooses a hat for her wife. Through this socially inexperienced woman, Augusta is trying to destroy and expose Hugh. Micky Miranda, the son of a power-hungry South American landowner, attends the same upscale private school as Edward and Hugh Pilaster. In the boarding school, a boy mysteriously drowns in water, and as he reconstructs what happened to his heart, Micky realizes that because of blackmail Augusta Pilaster… One of Ken Follett’s highly successful novels full of excitement and twist, which can only be put down when it’s over.