Interesting but too long, far too long. The time it takes between nuggets of information is incredible. Does it really take that long for it to dawn on Nick that he could look up the old business acquaintance who introduced his father to his dangerous client? Incredible. For someone with a murdered father, a father murdered most probably by someone he knows from work, Nick is remarkably trusting of his co-workers. He starts an affair with Sylvia and tells her everything he’s doing. She helps him by getting confidential files out of storage and it doesn’t dawn on him that it’s very easy for her to do this. Not until the chairman of the bank slips and tells Nick something that Nick knows he didn’t tell the chairman himself, does Nick wonder about Sylvia (their affair has lasted years).

The bit about who was really taking over the USB through a rival bank was a surprise. I guess if I knew more about banking and takeovers, I would have seen it but it seemed unrelated to the ‘who killed Alexander Neumann mystery’. The person who killed his father is USB’s biggest account holder; Ali Nevlevi. A criminal from Turkey now gathering an army in Lybia or Palestine and he needs something like $800 million to buy a nuclear bomb from the now defunct Soviet Union. The only way he can make that kind of money is to take over USB through a rival bank. Up until now heroin smuggling is how he’s made his money. He brings it in and out of USB like clockwork and until now, no one has cared. In the background of this whole thing is a US CIA operation to catch Nevlevi and to stop his heroin from going out. To do that, they need to freeze his accounts and that is against everything the Swiss banking industry has stood for. Things change and he’s ultimately brought down by Nick who now knows that Ali Nevlevi is the man who murdered his father.

Nick Neumann had it all: a Harvard degree, a beautiful fiancee, a star-making Wall Street career. But behind the dazzling veneer of this golden boy is a man haunted by the brutal killing of his father seventeen years before.

Now chilling new evidence has implicated his father's employer, the United Swiss Bank, in the crime. Nick doesn't know how. Or why. But he has a plan to find out: move to Zurich. Work for the same bank. Follow in his father's footsteps. Look for the same secrets ... and uncover something so shocking, so unexpected, justice may not be enough.

For as a circle of treachery tightens around him, as a woman with secrets of her own enters his life, Nick makes another chilling discovery. Not just about his father but about himself. And how far he's willing to go to find out what happened seventeen years before--when a man died and a conspiracy was born. ( )

Numbered Account lives up to the “thriller” classification. The problems are challenging, the characters compelling, and action fast paced. It’s hard to put the book down. Ten years after the first read, I was still on the edge of my seat, since I could not remember how it all came out.

My complete review is on my Blog, Nate's Library, specifically at: http://nates-library.blogspot.com/200... ( )

Although I enjoyed "Numbered Account" by Christopher Reich I found that this book did not have the grip of a good thriller. The suspense was mild and anti-climactic in a lot of areas. The writing seemed to be more matter-of-fact instead of dramatic. ( )

Impressive debut novel from Reich. I was turned onto Reich after reading his short story about Nick Neumann in "Thriller" - and Neumann is the main protagonist in Numbered Account. Swiss banking, corporate espionage, political intrigue, international terrorism all wrapped up in one entertaining book. ( )