(3 of 4)
The latest novel off the Arthur Hailey assembly line tells the story of the First Mercantile American Bank. It is one of the 20 largest in the country, with its parent-branch office tower gleaming over a composite city in the Midwest. (A dirty river flows past the First Mercantile, and there are plenty of slums.) Following the death of wise and kindly F.M.A. President Ben Rosselli, two vice presidents personifying fiscal vice and fiscal virtue struggle for control.
Virtue believes in "the ancient verity of thrift" and wants to use the bank as a community resource. Vice (who comes equipped with a frigid wife and an effete son) cares only for profit. It is he who pushes a dangerously large loan to a multinational corporation at the expense of municipal bonds and local construction projects. Meanwhile, as background, Hailey provides a bank theft, a counterfeit-credit ring, extramarital affairs, race problems and a Robert Vescoesque corporate swindle.
The Moneychangers is well timed. In the past 18 months, three major U.S. banks have collapsed. The "watch list" kept by the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency on banks in need of special surveillance has later reached an alltime high of 150. The general reader, too, judging by the success of Martin Mayer's recent expose of banking (TIME, Jan. 20) is beginning to wonder if going systematically into debt is as prudential as it was once thought to be.
On balance, readers of The Moneychangers will come off encouraged. Fiscal virtue triumphs in the end and has the final words on finance as well. "Banks and the money system," he observes, "are like delicate machinery ... let one component get seriously out of hand because of greed or politics or plain stupidity, and you imperil all the others." Hailey apparently does not feel the same way about fiction. The insider's details that give his novel its texture simply bury its feeble literary qualities.
LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL CASTLE by JOSEPH and FRANCES GIES
272 pages. Thomas Y. Crowell. $7.95.
Castles are crumbly and romantic.
They still hint at an age more colorful and gallant than our own, but are often debunked by boring people who like to run on about drafts and grumble that the latrines did not work. Joseph and Frances Gies offer a book that helps set the record straight—and keeps the romance too.
The authors rightly approach the castle as the center of medieval life. Their story ranges well beyond the castle gate, but it centers on Chepstow, a well-preserved fortress on the Welsh border not far from Bristol. The 12th century lord of Chepstow, William Marshal, turns up with a companion knight on the tournament circuit in France. Touring the country like early-day golf pros, they clean up handsomely, accumulating scores and scores of horses and piles of armor in more than 100 contests.