“In the trillion dollar chase, who is the hunted — and at what cost?”

Conor Morgan has the perfect plan: recruit a team with hearts of larceny to pull off the greatest techno-heist in modern banking history.

The stakes: close to a trillion dollars. The target: neXus, the world's premier credit and debit card payments system, operated by the power of invisible money.

With futurist weapons inspired by Zulu and Mongol battle strategies, the crew crashes neXus computer systems worldwide in a daring transcontinental robbery. But a Delta hit team of Enforcers hunt them down as Morgan's plan unravels.

Dancing on the Brink of the World is interwoven with elements of the mysterious. Recurrent prime numbers and echoing supersymmetries converge in a morality tale of friendship and trust, betrayal and vengeance.

In San Francisco and London, Morgan's team is on the run from the most sinister assassin since Jack the Ripper, with a ransom of untraceable diamonds, a dazzlingly erotic heroine and the ghostly messengers of ancient Celtic gods.

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(Warning ~ the following editorial review contains some spoilers)

“The title “Dancing on the Brink of the World” is both memorable and evocative. It conveys a double meaning to illustrate central themes in the novel: to show the protagonist's way of life lived on the edge, in metaphor and geography, and to honor ancestors and the natural world in a strong sense of place.

In earlier times the people of the northern California coast held the life-giving powers within land and sea in supreme reverence and awe, famously celebrated within a Costonoan Ohlone ghost dance chant, “dancing on the brink of the world.”

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The conspiracy plot outline caught my immediate attention. I was drawn to the themes of initiation into the world of the mysterious and to the concept of derailing the global financial system by audacity and daring. This rather unusual combination recalls the historic connection between money and alchemy and the quest for metaphysical meaning pursued by ancient families in the acquisition of immense riches.

The drama unfolds in “Dancing on the Brink of the World” inside a detailed, twisty and complex storyline with multiple elements, handled skillfully and with considerable wit and finesse.

At 180,000 words, the novel is somewhat longer and with more literary overtones than a straight crime thriller “target market” would suggest.

Readers who appreciated Eco's “The Name of the Rose” or Hoeg's “Smilla's Sense of Snow” would probably enjoy this book.

With amusing and digressive conversations, an elegantly devised subplot or two, and highly developed main characters, “Dancing on the Brink” is ideally aimed toward more thoughtful readers.

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In making use of a formal prologue, and then opening the first chapter with an enticing note about Chinese ghosts, the author immerses the reader immediately into the double world of Conor Morgan.

From the Prologue:

Conor Morgan realized he’d just been cheated out of 249,750 billion US dollars.

He stared at the treacherous array of numbers on the screen in front of him until they seemed to sway and dance. The final string of mocking zeros coalesced into a mandala of emptiness and waste, ruining hours of careful plans and calculations.

From Chapter One:

The Chinese say ghosts hover over bar doorways to beguile the unwary, to enchant and entrance and entrap them within. But Con didn’t need enticement to enter Chinese bars. He knew all the friendly ghosts and hung red lotus flower lanterns for them on tall bamboo poles. In the seventh lunar month, when the gates of Hell opened and hungry ghosts were unleashed from the yin of their sepulchral existence to roam the yang of ours, Con welcomed them with a nod and a wink and drinks on the house.

In this way he hoped to avoid sharing their destiny.

The reader is drawn in right away by the power of the story.

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Conor Morgan can become, at turns, devious or straightforward, impulsive or calculating. He's the ideal protagonist because the reader finds him sympathetic and wants him to succeed, but is amused and sometimes shocked by his flaws.

Con is a mainframe computer specialist who comes to America to make his fortune. Recruited by the credit card systems giant neXus, he's soon to lose his livelihood in a changing global economy.

When his wife is dying of cancer, and neXus refuses to pay for further medical treatment that has already bankrupted his family, Con becomes obsessed with revenge against the company.

Deeply absorbed by questions of the nature of existence behind everyday reality, he studies ancient texts and the cultures of indigenous peoples for a moral compass to guide his life.

His wife Conchita commits suicide in a dawn jump from the Golden Gate Bridge, timing the outgoing tides so that her body is carried over the brink of the world, past the great white sharks that circle off the Farallones, the Isles of the Dead.

Con has lost everything of meaning when a former lover, Peach, finds him one last lucky contract in Denver. But Con is remorseful when his love for Peach is rekindled so soon after his wife's death.

Con's vendetta against neXus drives him into a bitter and private war. In Denver, he designs and builds an energy device he intends to use to degauss magnetic computer tapes and to destroy neXus ability to process half a billion daily currency transactions.

Con names this device the iXwa, after the short stabbing spears of Zulu warriors. He's inspired by the victory of an underdog: superior Zulu battle tactics, armed with iXwas and bull-hide shields, inflicted one of the greatest defeats in military history by a native people against a modern army equipped with Gatling guns, artillery, rockets and rifles, against the British at Isandhlwana in 1879.

And in a certain sense, this is a war story. Con's obsession guides his life. His vision of 23,957 banks dead in the water on seven continents, unable to process neXus debits and credits anywhere in the world, is the driving motive of his life. With his inside information, he's determined to make this happen.

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Con's robbery crew are Peach, Fitz and Vladimir, friends chosen for their clean records and high tolerance for risk.

All are pressed by a sense of unfulfilled promise, under-employed as exotic dancer, bartender and taxi driver. Con recruits them on the premise of complete trust in one another.

All three have greater abilities and aspirations. Fitz, working as a bartender, has been unable to achieve his fortune as a photographer.

Peach, at work as a dancer, is saving her money to start a martial arts school based on Japanese warrior concepts.

Vladimir, the driver, burned out from a career as a reporter, seeks truths hidden behind the political matrix of society.

Each one is motivated by the promise of a four-way split of Con's billion-dollar neXus ransom. In their view, neXus is a network of robbers pulling off the biggest con the world has seen, against anyone who ever went bankrupt in the credit system.

In summary, each character in the novel, from background to behavior, is developed to a very high degree.

All four, Con, Peach, Fitz and Vladimir, are opposed by one of the most inexorable foes imaginable: Carver, the Delta assassination team leader called into action by the secretive banking Consortium.

Carver was born into a London establishment, old school military-occult dynasty which has served at the pleasure of the world's economic rulers since Cromwell.

He is recruited as a remorseless killer and interrogation specialist far beyond the rules of the Geneva Convention. Cultivated and refined on the surface, he is deeply psychopathic at work. Dr. Josef Mengele and Jack the Ripper inspired him; Hannibal Lecter would fear him.

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Dialogue is consistently natural and realistic throughout extended passages, with some technical virtuosity in three or four way conversations. British wit combined with American casual, very well brought off.

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The novel is designed in three acts: The Dance, The Brink, and The World. The use of four consecutive infinity symbols to denote breaks in passages and sequences in the narrative also provides ease of reading.

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Vivid descriptions of the atmosphere and settings of San Francisco, lovely detail about Lotus race cars and amusing asides on the various “Da Vinci Code” topics all combine to  make fascinating reading.

The book is likely to generate some controversy due to the author's way of comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable, but this does tend to make for an eye-opening and sometimes illuminating read.

The author has done some fine creative work designing his website and book cover artwork.

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Highly recommended. Engaging story, absorbing characters and first rate prose style. With adept marketing, “Dancing on the Brink of the World” could find an audience worldwide in America and Canada, England, Europe, Australia. The book has won some stellar reviews from first readers at amazon.com in the USA and UK. A stunning literary prospect with every chance of international success.”