The Profiteers

Oppenheim understood something essential about money: it's never just money. The Profiteers captures a world that had just survived one catastrophe and was racing toward another, trading in wheat futures and moral certainties alike. John Philip Wingate arrives in London with a reputation and a vendetta. He's an American financier, which in 1921 means he's either rescuing the British economy or destroying it, depending on who you ask. His target is Dreadnought Phipps, a man whose nickname tells you everything about his methods. The stage is set at Lady Amesbury's garden party, where stockbrokers gossip about wheat prices and a mysterious company called British and Imperial Granaries, and everyone is watching to see which man will blink first. This is Oppenheim at his finest: high stakes dressed as high society, where a dinner invitation carries more weight than a stock tip. The novel works as both period piece and prescient warning, the machinery of finance and the humans who get chewed up by it.