TRADER MONTHLY: Lowlifes In Pinstripes

A new fiction collection examines the seamy side of the Street.

MONDAY JUNE 25, 2007 -- IT’S HARDLY NEWS that Wall Street heavies can be every bit as corrupt, venal and merciless as any common criminal. Yet even the most cynical trader will likely blanch when confronted with the rogues’ gallery of scalawags on display in the new short-fiction collection Wall Street Noir.

The latest entry in boutique publisher Akashic Books’ location-specific crime series (previous titles include Chicago Noir, New Orleans Noir and, er, Twin Cities Noir), Wall Street Noir — edited by crime-fiction notable Peter Spiegelman — offers up an agglomeration of demented money men sure to make your own dodgy comrades look like earnest, milk-drinking church folk.

These 17 mostly A-list tales of trading chicanery and depredation (sample title: “The Day Trader in the Trunk of Cleto’s Car”) span the globe from Thailand to Honduras to lower Manhattan; the “Wall Street” of the title serves mainly as a metaphor for the decentralized, million-tentacled modern finance industry. Standouts include Stephen Rhodes’s kickoff vignette, “At the Top of His Game,” in which backstabbing traders make life miserable for their colleagues; “A Terrorizing Demonstration,” a blistering tale from Wall Street Journal music critic Jim Fusilli; and “A Trader’s Lot,” a potboiler from the pen of commodities-futures trader Twist Phelan.

Read more on ( Trader Daily )