Largo Winch Book 9: The Price of Money

Largo Winch Book 9: The Price of Money, by Jean Van Hamme & Phillipe Francq, Cinebook

OVER THE duration of this book, writer Van Hamme shuffles some cold hard facts regarding what others might consider financial wizardry, lays his cards out on the table regarding his intended plot and ask us to prepare ourselves for yet another walk on the wild side as an adventuring we will go.

Page 15, Panel 4 is the moment you know our hero has decided to play Robin Hood meets The Saint once more, but changes are afoot: the supporting cast we’ve come to come to appreciate and rely on to help spin the story out in strange and exciting ways has become too familiar, too cosy, and Van Hamme is moving them like chess pieces; no more deus ex machine with these folk, at least not in ways we expected.

Enter Silky Song, Winch’s new flight pilot; a female Bruce Lee, leather-clad biker with a wise-ass mouth, all trousers and only interested in women in skirts... On paper she might sound interesting, and her debut is pretty explosive, but as a character she really rubs this reader up the wrong way (too smug) as I said, Van Hamme knows exactly what he’s doing: we’re not taking the easy road here, and it’s going to prevent the Largo Winch series going stale and instead make it all the more interesting.

It all begins on a TV show where Winch is taken to task for the W Group closing down several factories it has recently taken over. When a former manager of one of the plants shows up and blows his own head off live on the show things move into first gear. Winch is accused of being responsible for making the dead man emotionally unstable via his business practices and legal action taken, thus the hero begins investigating the truth for himself... Things go wrong, badly, and he becomes hunted for an actual murder. Suffice to say this is part one of a two part saga... Stay tuned!

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