Billionaire (2024)

Originally published in 1983, before being republished in 2016, this is classic Peter James, a well researched mix of mainstream stereotypes and outlandish outliers as city stockbroker Alex Rocq's hectic, but heading towards affluent life is turned upside down when he gets caught in the middle of global plans ans schemes by the likes of his own stockbroking company, Israel intelligence (Mossad), an oil rich Arabian land, weapons dealers and the money markets! Scheming and planning that could lead to war in the Middle East. Believe it or not, this light touch but well constructed conspiracy thriller is as much fun as it is a thriller! 6 out of 12

Important Note: This book was published in 1983 and is a reprint.

A few years back I asked my local library if they could get this in for me as you'd think there would be some lying around. They looked it up and said no way - it was permanently out of print and they had no copies. To be honest I forgot about, despite being a big Peter James fan, there are more than enough books in the world for me to not want to pay hundreds of pounds for an out of print title from the 80s. When I saw this on the new releases list this week I was a little confused - and then delighted when I realized they had finally released a Kindle Edition, and reprinted the Paperback too. About time! But if you do see a hardcopy of the first edition in a second hand book shop any time, grab it, because it's worth a pretty penny these days.

This is a standalone thriller that features Alex Rocq, a fancy city stockbrocker who is tempted to take the easy route of big money through insider trading, and finds himself in serious trouble. He's offered a chance to get out of this money-pit in exchange for a favour and silence and gets dragged into some shady dealings and a bit of action. It has a fairly wide ranging cast and we see the story unfold from multiple points of view. I had some problems empathising with anyone to be honest, and it's hard to care about characters you don't like - so don't expect a new Roy Grace to fall in love with!

It's a fairly fast paced thriller, with an interesting background in finance. It does show that Peter James' writing has come a long way since the early 80s, and this book is a little rough around the edges and definitely not comparable to the Roy Grace series, but I still found it very enjoyable, and appreciated the foreword. I would definitely recommend it to any fans of Peter James and I'm really glad that it's back in print as I don't believe any book should be relegated to the graveyard.

In the end an enjoyable book but a really slow start setting the scene and all the characters. I am a big fan of Peter James books which is why I persisted. Great fast pace story of a stock broker at the end.

A decent enough read, but not what I expected based on the blurb. I thought it had a very slow start and very quick wrap up at the end (it felt as though the author got fed up at around the 270 page mark and just wanted it done with). At least two male characters were described as having a “handsome, if rather weak” face which bothered me as an off thing to repeat. Perhaps that’s the best way to describes this book… handsome, if rather weak…

I found this book borderline boring. There was nothing especially bad about it, the story and characters just did not grab my interest. I much prefer other books I've read by this author.

(1.5 stars)

Better than his first two books with hints of the future talent between the lines.

Not a bad read but took a long time to get going.

Not my cup of tea at all, only finished it through my determination to read his whole collection!! It was well written though and the end was satisfying x

I found this book very confusing. For me the story lacked fluidity. It felt like several different stories had been cobbled together. I also found the main synopses surrounding gold a bit ludicrous. And as for the coffee storyline. Probably won't read another book by this author.

Just like his brilliant Roy Grace series, this book is intriguing and exciting like all his others and in this instance, is based in the early 80s (having been also written then and re-published) and involves the world of commodity broking. Something I have never really understood and having watched the film, Trading Places at least a thousand times. Undercover agents being chased by Mossad while secretly funnelling tens of millions of pounds into offshore accounts, car crashes, hot and wild and weird sexual shenanigans and brilliant dialogue.

The author achieves all this greatness by utilizing bonkbuster techniques in his writing to keep you hooked. The characters he has created are well crafted and make you want to get to know them. To the point where you just cant put his books down. They read like film scripts sometimes, something the author knows a lot about, which makes it so easy and entertaining reading. Full of plot twists, turns and cliffhangers. Highly recommended.

Great classic though a little dated

This was the last read on my holiday and I managed to finish it as I landed. This is a great read, a classic Peter James.

The reason I dropped the one star is Peter James's trade mark of research. It is impeccable as usual and the problem is that exactly that makes it very dated. (I worked in a similar industry in the 90s and it seems dated in comparison with those times.) A lot of the talk about price movement is a bit heavy.

The gory bits are gory and the scene with the waiter trying to open the bottle of wine is hilarious. A great read. Thanks, Peter.

Disappointment !!!!

My favorite author of all times , disapointed me with this book !!! I was bored and was waiting for something to happen !!!

Stock market .. Really not my thing !! Ill stick to the roy grace series

Really liked this early work of James. Set in 80's London, old school espionage! Learnt a bit about brokerage.

Not my usual genre this one is more of a thriller/spy type book with a mix of commodity stock broking at its heart. We are initially introduced to Alex Rocq a city metals broker on the M4 motorway and his girlfriend Amanda on their way to London and a rather frustrated driver behind them in a hurry called Baenhaker and these characters come nicely together further along in the book.

The story centres around Rocq and his clients dealing in gold and a disastrous deal Rocq makes in coffee which threatens to destroy him. The story moves along fairly quickly and there is a lot of explanation of what a broker does and the price of commodities which although I did find a bit 'over my head' it was necessary to build up tension when he's watching the prices rise and fall and helps to let you feel the excitement and horror when things go the wrong way. That said, James did labour the point at times. I can see why brokers get 'burn out' early in their careers trading on the floor - it must be exhausting.

The storyline was good and the pace was pitched right to keep this moving along but I just felt it lacked something - I haven't read Peter James before and I did kind of enjoy the book but it wasn't a wow for me. It was predictable, I think I always knew he'd come out ok in the end and there weren't any curve balls to navigate round which would have made it a bit more exciting. There were also a lot of secondary characters which did make it confusing at times when I had to go back to see who was 'speaking' to make sense of what I was reading.

Spy thrillers are not my usual genre and because of this maybe my expectations were much higher; it's a well written book, it was enjoyable but just not a wow book. I will try more by this writer as I have been told this is not his best. Only 3 stars from me for this one.

This book is one of the oldest books in James’ bibliography, and it’s definitely a product of the times in which it was written – as the author himself admins in his introduction. It’s actually a reasonably well-written book, and certainly a sign of things to come – but at the same time, it feels old-fashioned.

There’s also the fact that it isn’t a crime novel, which is what James is most well-known for. Instead, it’s sort of a cross between an espionage novel and a thriller based on money and power, and the story line follows a man called Rocq who gets into an awkward situation involving gold and coffee stocks. It’s pretty confusing if you’re not into politics and the way that the world works – but with the added complexity of it being based on the way the world worked in the 1980s.

Overall, I wouldn’t say that this was a bad book – it just wasn’t as good as his others. It’s also not the kind of genre that I’d usually read – I find that a lot of spy thrillers are pretty much the same, and this one didn’t do much to make itself stand out. In fact, by the time that I reached the end of it, I’d already forgotten half of the things that happened along the way.

Really, you’re only going to love this book if you’re a big fan of the genre of writing, and I don’t think it has a huge amount of mainstream appeal. I read at least a hundred books per year, and this one’s the type that would be about bang in the middle if I were to list them in order of how much I enjoyed them. Because of that, I’d recommend reading one of Peter James’ Roy Grace books before giving this one a go.

A very early standalone thriller by one of my favourite authors Peter James. I purchased this book some time ago and just never got round to reading it, perhaps it should have stayed that way. I had a bad feeling straightaway about this book when reading the foreword by Peter James. He said that he didn’t rate this book and in fact kept it out of print for three years only to re release it when copies were been sold at extortionate prices. Prewarned yet I carried on reading and nearly gave up several times which is completely out of character for me. The book was so slow and boring and only got better towards the end. So glad I didn’t read this book before I read the Roy Grace series because it may have put me right off.

Alex Rocq is a city stockbroker and leads a very comfortable life, a luxury flat in London, a country cottage, a very expensive car, and a lucrative job that he still finds time to enjoy life further. Alex receives a tip off to play the commodities market for himself , but his luck comes to a very abrupt end when his luck finally runs out.

He is offered the chance to write off his debts in exchange for special services and silence. He feels that he has been offered a chance to regain all his losses and can’t believe his good fortune. But just how far will he go to harness the power players around him?

A very disappointing read but can’t wait for normal service to be resumed with the ever reliable Roy Grace series.

Really unimpressed! I've only ever read one Peter James book and that was the first book in the Roy Grace series, which I thought was brilliant. I decided to read this one because it was a stand alone novel which I thought was fairly new. It was only after I got about quarter of the way into this book that I look up it's publication date to realise it was published the year I was born! This revelation did explain why the book comes across so out dated but doesn't excuse it's poor quality. The technical detail regarding the commodities market and the stock exchange was; monotonous, boring, repetitive and, in my opinion, unnecessary. The premise of the situation being faced by the integral characters could have been explained without the need for the barrage of figures and statistics which, for anyone unfamiliar with the market, is complicated and confusing. In addition none of the characters are likeable which I understand was probably the point but didn't make for an enjoyable read. Overall I think I was disappointed that this novel didn't live up to the first one I read and I definitely think I will stick to this author's crime novels, or at least something a bit more modern

I am a big Peter James fan and stumbled excitedly across this in a charity shop last week. While I wasn’t disappointed as such I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to fans of the Roy Grace series and it should be be taken on its own merits.

I normally don’t persevere with a book unless it grips me, there are far too many other books to discover, so the fact I finished this one means it held my interest to a certain extent. I found the ins and outs of commodities trading fascinating and the premise interesting but I did not warm to any of the characters, particularly Alex Rocq the main protagonist, and felt the ending to be a little rushed. Has it put me off Peter James’ books? No. Has it put me off vintage Peter James? Maybe a little.

2 to 3 stars. Despite not liking any of the characters in this book and finding it incredibly boring for the first one hundred pages and thinking this might be a DNF, it wasn’t and I did finish. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with the storyline either not knowing much about metals or coffee futures and not liking the greedy nature of every character.

However I do like James’ writing style and his dry sense of humour. I do prefer the Roy Grace series though. James’ often has too many characters with odd names and then introduces more later in the novel which for me isn’t always a successful tactic. In the end I was pleasantly disgusted with the entire band of characters and their avaricious identity.

I love Peter James’ “dead” series so thought I would try one of his other books. I found this book very hard going at the beginning, there are a lot of characters, some with very long names and several were described as having a handsome but weak face! There was far too much foreign politics and detailed descriptions of how the stock market works and none of the characters were likeable except maybe Alex, who was a bit of an idiot! It got slightly better towards the end where there was more action and less description but I didn’t really understand the very end bit, so would say this book was not for me.

I couldn't get into this book at first, but because it was Peter James I stuck with it, knowing that the story would eventually pick up and twist unexpectedly. This is the story of Alex Rocq, a precious metal dealer at Globalex London during the 1980s. Rocq wants to get rich like his billionaire clients. He receives a tip on coffee futures, buys and gets burnt and this is where the story gets interesting. Some of Rocqs clients hatch a plan to force up the price of gold, the plan doesn't go to plan! People are killed ad in the last few pages we find out who are the real winners and losers.

I thought this book was okay but I would have given it a higher score if there wasn't a couple of things that really bugged me such as spelling errors for one. The thing that really grated on me though was the use of 'the Mossad' to describe the Israeli Secret Service. Now please correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't Mossad literally translate as the institute which would make 'the Mossad' nonsensical.

The book was just full of unlikeable people and I really didn't care what happened to them but by no means was it unreadable.

It's not that Billionaire was written poorly, I am quite a fan of Peter James, I just felt that the novel didn't accurately reflect the blurb. I went in expecting it to be different to what it was. That isn't to say that it was bad, it just had more discussion of international relations, in a sense, and technical jargon surrounding metal dealerships than I had expected. Not bad, just different. Wouldn't read again, but would perhaps recommend based on the content I've read, not the back of the book. Maybe read a synopsis online rather than the blurb before reading.

This book is a very remarkable one. It is obvious that Peter James just started writing, lots of twists and turns and not always consistent. At times almost losing contact with reality and venturing into at time hilarious situations. But this book reveals some of the gems he would later produce, the plots, the eye for detail and the sharp observations. I have read virtually all the books written by James and I will always consider " Billionaire " as a great start by a real talented writer.

I enjoyed the book. Felt it was interesting enough to keep me reading. I liked how at parts it gave a brief bit of more technical information on the stock market. I mean brief as in 1 paragraph. There was enough action to keep me interested and I liked the characters. Never quite had the wow factor for me and probably wouldn’t read again but I would be interested in the authors other work as a book to read on holiday

Another Peter James book under my belt and I must confess it wasn't my favourite or my least favourite. Rocq is a young stockbroker who sells and buys metals and other commodities for rich clients around the world. When he's boss approaches him with a deal he finds it hard to say no. But Rocq has other ideas than carrying out the arrangement he has just agreed.

Readable but not one of his best.

A bit dated thesedays

I suppose it's a problem all writers face give financial numbers and ten years in they seem small. A 911 turbo at that money wow I will have one please. However if you ignore the numbers or simply ,in your head add a couple of nights it's still a really good read. It's a very simplistic version of trading commodities but still interesting to get some handle of the financial world. Enjoy the book,I did, just wish I had read it when it was first written

Skim read basically the entire thing. It wasn't awful; it just wasn't my sort of thing. Plus it was very early on in his writing career, so I'll cut him some slack. Obviously the Roy Grace series is an absolute winner and I can't wait to work my way through more. My advice: don't judge Peter James by this book.

Billionaire, Peter James.
1985/2018.
Rocq .....what a name! Re issued early book. Car chases, excess on every level describing big stock brokers to arms brokers, international politics, small kingdoms, so many schemes....deaths! Lifestyles! A read that has it’s moments with exciting twusts but too much stock exchange detail and excess of the rich was a bit over the top.... 2/5

It's hard to like a book where none of the characters are really likeable - except maybe the women in the supporting role of being sha***d. There were so many unpleasant things here, too. Could be realistic, but "a forest is just as real as a pig sty and a whole lot nicer," as I learned from Emily of the New Moon books.