Tobias Hill: The Cryptographer

Reviewed by STEPHEN JEWELL

Money it's said, makes the world go round. So what would happen if not just currencies and exchange rates but the entire concept of money came crashing down overnight? This third novel by London-based author Tobias Hill is set in a future, possibly 2021, where all hard cash has been replaced by Soft Gold, an electronic currency. Soft Gold has revolutionised society and made a quadrillionaire of its creator John Law, the cryptographer of the title whose name is taken from a famous 18th Century Scottish banker.

Law appears to be squeaky clean and untouchable but a chink appears in his armour when it comes to light that he committed a minor tax fraud. He is investigated by Anna Moore, a disillusioned tax inspector in her late 30s, whose once-promising career is foundering as she is eclipsed by younger, more ruthlessly ambitious colleagues.

Unfortunately, Anna falls in love with the charismatic Law, neglecting to heed The Revenue's two main tenets: don't believe anything the client says; don't become emotionally involved. For a thriller, The Cryptographer is a slow read, particularly when Anna becomes embroiled in the affairs of Law's young family. But the pace quickens when the seemingly unbreakable Soft Gold code goes haywire and the world is plunged into Day After Tomorrow-style apocalyptic anarchy.

Hill calls it "historical science fiction" but, like Atwood's Oryx and Crake or even Orwell's 1984, it is the sort of literary futurism which shuns genre classification and is usually described as speculative fiction. It would have been good if Hill had focused more on the technological trappings of his futuristic milieu, and the life-changing effects of Soft Gold, but it is an absorbing read.

* Stephen Jewell is an Auckland journalist