The Fear Index [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio CD]

This is a very topical thriller based around the current economic depression and its beginnings. The plot throws a different twist on Artificial Intelligence getting out of hand and plays on the human fear of computers taking over, as well as the AI using THE FEAR INDEX to determine where to invest. The book revolves around the main character Dr Alex Hoffman, a physicist who sets up a hedge fund which, using his self-learning programme, earns him a vast fortune. Strange things start to happen and Alex realises he is not as fully in control of his life as he thought and begins to doubt himself and events. The writing is good, the descriptions and dialogue spot on.

Where the book let me down was in the somewhat stereotypical characters and lack of their development, the hedge fund investors are all self-involved geeks and the policeman predictable. The Darwin analogy, although interesting, seemed to fizzle out and not reach its full potential, much like the novel.

Don't get me wrong, this is a good book and I enjoyed reading it, but it could have been so much more!

Dr Alex Hoffman is an intensely private, brilliant physicist who has developed a series of algorithms capable of predicting, with uncanny accuracy, how stockmarkets will react to events. His investment company has made him - and others - a billionaire off the calculations of his artificially intelligent VIXAL-4 super-computer. He is happily (if somewhat improbably) married and has built his company with a partner who has the social skills that he lacks. One night Hoffman is awoken by the sound of an intruder in the house - the catalyst in a chain of events that over the next 24 hours will end some lives, cause those close to him to doubt his sanity and potentially may bring down the global economy.

It took a little while for this thriller to pull me in. The tension takes some time to build. I didn't particularly care for any of the characters, none of whom (with the possible exception of Hoffman) felt very believable. However it's deftly written and even as I started to work out parts of the plot and where the story might be going, other elements kept me guessing. It's a strange change of pace for Harris, reading more like a Michael Crichton novel than a Robert Harris one. It has the scientific edge that I associate with Crichton's books, it's highly topical and grounded in recent events. It's also very readable - I tore through it in a day. So where's the problem? It's more shallow than I expect Harris's writing to be. The plot doesn't have a massive twist, some some small kinks. I simply didn't care about any of the characters. I read it happily enough, but I don't think it will stay with me.

.... because I've rarely felt so ambivalent about a book after reading the final page. I've reviewed it in my mind scores of times since then, but I'm still not quite sure which way to jump. Let's begin with a bit of background.

Standard & Poor's 500 Index (the S&P 500) is second only to the Dow Jones as a mirror of events in the US stock Market. The Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index (known as VIX) is a measure of the volatility of the market in tradeable options over stocks in the S&P 500 companies. Because volatility in the options market is seen as an indicator of imminent volatility in the more general stock market, the VIX is nicknamed 'The Fear Index', high volatility being associated with high risk. In fact, high volatility can also precede a sharply rising market, but speculators are instinctive pessimists in the first instance. Modern hedge funds deal in options and other similar tradeable products rather than in actual stocks and bonds. They are aggressively managed, reacting rapidly to market movements in order to seek profits even in a falling market. That's all you need to know about the stock market in order to follow the plot of the book.

As in a number of Harris' books (I confess I have a couple yet to read), the author grafts a fictional narrative on to a body of historical fact - in this case, the workings of the stock markets and in particular the crash which began on the New York Exchange in the early afternoon of 6 May 2010 and reverberated around the world. The action takes place in Geneva, beginning on the evening of 5 May and covering, in broad terms, the next day-and-a-half.

Alex Hoffmann is a brilliant, though geeky, US-born mathematician, happily married to a British wife, Gabrielle, but socially inept and inclined to avoid contact with humanity except when absolutely necessary in the course of his work. He came to Geneva to work at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), birthplace of the world wide web and home to the Large Hadron Collider, but left to pursue his interest in algorithmic systems (artificial intelligence to you and I). He devises a system for dealing in options, extending the VIX approach by monitoring all web references to fear in its widest sense and using the system to identify likely consequent stock movements. Financed by Hugo Quarry, a former British banker and Oxford economics graduate with a zeal for riches (whom, incidentally, Gabrielle cannot stand) Hoffmann and Quarry set up a hedge fund, Hoffmann Investment Technologies. It trades very successfully, and after successive upgrades of the system the program is now self-learning, requires only occasional intervention and is moving from very successful to phenomenally successful. Hoffmann himself is not money-driven, and doesn't quite know what to do with his accumulated personal wealth, which by the time of the action is of the order of $1.2billion.

On the evening of 5 May, Alex is contemplating a valuable first edition of Darwin's 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals'. It has been delivered by courier; the bookseller's slip marks the section dealing with fear, but there is no indication of the donor's identity. In the small hours of the following morning, Hoffmann hears an intruder; he gets up to investigate, calls the police, sees the intruder but is knocked unconscious before the police arrive. How did the intruder successfully avoid the state-of-the-art security installation? He discovers that the book was ordered and paid for by himself, but he has no recollection of placing any such order. Has someone hacked into his personal security? Is he perhaps losing his mind? - certain features of the CAT-scan taken at hospital where he is treated for concussion suggest that this may be a possibility. As the day proceeds, the tension rises, eventually reaching a climax in the early hours of the following morning; it's impossible to say more without compromising the prospective reader's enjoyment.

So what's to be said on the plus side? Well, Harris is an accomplished writer; he uses words skilfully to create mood and increase tension, but his writing is always accessible. The book is an easy and enjoyable read, and in some sections is very hard to put down. I don't agree with some of the comments made by other reviewers; for example, Leclerc, the police inspector looking into the break-in and attack on Hoffmann is dismissed as 'a Clouseau clone' by Hugo Quarry - which is entirely in keeping with Quarry's character - but Leclerc is actually nothing like Clouseau. He may be approaching retirement and be a touch scruffy in the sartorial department, but he asks the right questions, and if he concludes that Alex is losing his mind, it is because the evidence available to him points firmly in that direction. If you are prepared to take the book at face value, you'll probably enjoy it very much, and on that basis I wouldn't wish to discourage you.

My problem is that 'Fear Index' is clearly intended as an allegory, and a multi-layered allegory at that - the choice of quotations used as chapter headings makes that very clear. I can't explain my misgivings in any detail without revealing pretty much the whole of the plot. Let me just say that the primary allegory is pretty obvious, but still unsettling, particularly after reading the last few pages. I can understand the logic of what I'll describe as the 'arranged events' in terms of the immediate consequences of those events, but I have great difficulty in unravelling the logic which made those consequences desirable in the first place - in fact, I'm left with the impression that attention was so strongly focussed on the cart that the author failed to notice the disappearance of the horse.

As ever, my view is my own and other views may be equally valid, but after a suitable period of meditation I conclude that the immediaste enjoyment of reading the book is outweighed by the retrospective sense of disappointment - so only three stars!