Photo credit: Janet Donovan
Ken Miller isn’t afraid to blur the lines between truth and fiction and in High Finance he does so with the panache of a novelist who knows his way around both a trading floor and a cocktail party. A work of fiction with the pulse of a reality debut novelist, Miller delivers a story as intoxicating as the markets it exposes.
High Finance is both financial thriller and social reckoning, a portrait of the moneyed class in triumph and ruin. A work of fiction rooted in reality, holding up a mirror to the culture of money, risk and moral compromise that defines America’s financial elite.
Ken Miller was the toast of Kalorama in Washington, DC as Juleanna Glover and Christopher Reiter opened their doors to friends to celebrate the author.
“In 2016, we had a bet,” Juleanna teased Miller, “which you might not remember. We had a bet that Trump was going to win. And I said, no, no, he’s never going to. And we bet dinner per se. I never paid up. And tonight you all being here is my means of paying up. So thank you for coming. I guess it’s not autobiographical because it’s got a little bit of a moral crook to it. But I’m halfway through. It is beautifully written. It is lyrical. The turns of phrase are really quite gorgeous. One of my other favorite authors, Elliot Ackerman, has blurbed it and said it was absolutely a page turner. I agree. This is a book that I really look forward to finishing.”
Ken Miller and Juleanna Glover
“Libess and I came to Wall Street, came to New York in ’76, and I went to work at Lehman Brothers and she went to work for her father’s publishing business and we both came home crying. I mean, New York is tough, very competitive. Anyway, this novel is called High Finance because the rather admirable protagonist is high a good portion of the time whilst doing his deals. He’s not a likable character. In fact, he’s extremely unlikable in that he cheats on his wife, he trades on inside information and are other negative things. But he’s not quite despicable. There are a few characters in the book who are more despicable and in fact the internal auditor who tries to bust him for trading on inside information will be the spinoff for another novel that I hope to bring forth next year.”
Miller has always been more than a novelist — he’s an activist with a conscience, a financier with a front-row seat to power, and a storyteller with an instinct for the drama that lies just beneath the surface of privilege. In High Finance, he distills all of it into fiction that glitters with the pulse of reality. The novel carries readers into the rarefied world where fortunes shift with a phone call, betrayals are inked as swiftly as contracts, and ambition is the only true currency. Miller writes with the authority of an insider and the wit of a satirist, crafting a story as dazzling as it is dangerous. Equal parts thriller and social commentary, High Finance is both a page-turner and a mirror—reflecting back the seductions and shadows of the moneyed elite.
“I have been a closet fiction writer for decades, but it’s only now, in my eighties, that my debut novel based on my Wall Street years is being published. I hope this work of literary fiction will give the reader a few laughs and some insights into what’s involved in so-called “high finance.”
