A Dangerous Fortune by Ken Follett Macmillan $255 KEN Follett's new book is the literary equivalent of a computer game: undemanding, fast-moving and addictive.
It is an entirely comfortable book. The baddies stay bad and the goodies win out in the end. No surprises. But it is hard to feel cheated. Its 420 pages contain all the characters one could expect to find in a sure-to-be bestseller about the fluctuating fortunes of a Victorian banking family.
Enter Augusta, the wicked matriarch at the heart of the Pilaster family, who manipulates people's lives with the same ease as she draws up her fashionable dinner party lists.
As a woman in Victorian England she cannot seize power for herself, so the target for her ambitions is first her weak, good-natured husband Joseph for whom she wants a title, and later Edward, her ineffectual son for whom she wants the leadership of the bank, but who prefers brothels to banks and gambling to accounting.
Augusta's fellow conspirator is Edward's former schoolfriend Micky Miranda, the cruel but handsome Latin American who schemes to boost his family's fortune through making useful contacts in London.
However, in the tradition of the best Victorian romantic novels, there are plenty of characters with hearts of gold to stand in the way of the wicked Augusta and Micky.