Paul Kilduff

Of late I've been reading a novel by Dublin-based author Paul Kilduff, entitled The Dealer (2000).

You can read about him via the above link, and about The Dealer via this one.

What I'd like to mention today is simply the wide disparity between the dust jacket copy, which on its face is designed to tell you something about the contents, and those actual contents. Here's the dust jacket copy:

When the multi-billion-pound takeover of Provident Bank is sensationally announced at a West End press conference, life will never be the same for many influential players in the City of London.

A star equities dealer has just bought a million soaring Provident shares – and others wonder how he does it. A London Stock Exchange investigator begins his work. A leading research analyst speaks her mind to the media. A finance director celebrates with a visit to a discreet Docklands townhouse. A lucrative yet bizarre lifestyle is suddenly in jeopardy.

A Detective Inspector finds a bloated body in the mud of the River Thames and, unaware of the ultimate consequences, explores a complex web of inter-connected lives in his search for a ruthless killer.

Although we do get a brief scene in the novel in which a "leading research analyst" is speaking in an evening newscast, she is not "speaking her mind to the media" about the Provident deal, as this copy suggests. First, she isn't "speaking her mind" at all, she is toeing the company line. She is talking bullish stuff because that is what her brokerage firm bosses want her to do. Second, that interview isn't about the Provident deal, the center of the novel's plot. It is about an earnings report from County Beverages, which is featured in a subplot.

More irritatingly, the finance director who visits the discreet Docklands townhouse in connection with another character's "lucrative yet bizaare lifestyle" isn't doing so in order to "celebrate" the Provident deal. He was the only member of the board of directors of Provident to oppose that deal, and is consoling himself after having lost that vote.

Not important. Just annoying. I know that authors go along with this sort of distortion because they figure the marketing department of the publisher has to do ist thing ... but I really don't see how it would have hurt sales had they troubled to make the copy accurate about the contents.