2018 Novel Predicts Public Anger in China Over Lack of Viable Alternatives to Property-linked Investments

 

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The Lord of Billionaires' Row 

by Matthew K. Spencer

 

This novel, published in August 2018, deals with crime and espionage between the UK and China and the way in which criminals utilise the over-heated property markets in both countries, to the detriment of ordinary citizens. The problem in China is seen as one of only the privileged few having access to any investment which is not the (over-valued) Chinese property market or some company either trading in property or providing finance to those which do. The priviliged few, meanwhile, do have access to alternatives; which might be constructive, such as an investment in a company making something useful, or speculative, such as investing in the property market outside China, with London being a firm favourite (with Russians as well as Chinese!) To maintain an unfair gradient in investment opportunities between rich and poor in China, the poor must be forced by the CCP to put what money they have in property, even if it is a risky investment. (This causes mounting anger amonst those unable to invest safely for their own retirement, let alone their children's future.) The alternative investments are still vulnerable to market crashes, of course, but by being outside China they allow the people making those investments to flee the adverse consequences of the very CCP policies they benefitted from.

The problem with the British property market, especially in London, is that criminal gangs have been investing in the property market there for generations and this has made them over-powerful. It had also made the property market somewhat over-valued even before Russian and then Chinese millionaires started to pour money in, often without caring what the state of a property was or what it might really be worth. Add to that collaboration between those British criminal gangs and some politically well-connected Chinese and danger looms for both countries.

The temptations and the dangers of the property market for British gangsters are seen even in the Prologue and in their efforts to suck those gangsters into their own schemes, their Chinese counterparts get themselves involved in crimes and consequences they never even imagined possible, let alone likely.

 Smashwords E-book in multiple formats:

Available from this link, base price is $8:40 (library price $4). This edition is available in MOBI, EPUB, PDF and other formats and has in-text navigation features in order to support readers without the menu-driven navigation features of a Kindle.

This edition is also available from most Smashwords affiliates. Search for:

The Lord of Billionaires' Row by Matthew K. Spencer

NB: readers planning to read the book on a Linux PC with Libre Office, for example, will do better to buy the .pdf version rather than the .epub version, because Libre Office may treat every chapter of the .epub as a separate document and send you back to the table of contents to read each one separately. This does not happen with Adobe Digital Editions on a Windows or Mac platform, but in general the .pdf format is recommended for reasonably modern PCs. For geriatric PCs and CPM machines etc. a plaintext .txt version is available.

The online reader version is fine, as long as you can get online when you want to read! If you want something to read during connection outages, choose one of the downloadable files.

 

Amazon MOBI-format E-Book:

This edition does not have the in-text navigation features and is formatted according to Amazon, rather than Smashwords, guidelines. It supports menu-driven navigation as is normal for Kindles. Base price is £5.95, see links or your local Amazon domain for price in your currency and with/without VAT as appropriate to your location.

Available from amazon.co.uk via this link.

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Amazon Paperback:

Paperback (138,000 words, 375 pages) with a base price of £12.95, plus delivery (which may depend on what else you order). There is no VAT on books in the United Kingdom.

Because the paperback might be purchased by or for readers who cannot cope with a Kindle or other e-reader, the 12-point typeface was chosen for reading comfort and one of the proof copies was read by a 96-year-old who didn't complain, much.

The Kindle E-book and Paperback editions are now linked in all Amazon marketplaces where the Paperback is available, so choose a Kindle E-book link, above, and you should also be able to choose the paperback from the same page. The exception, as of July 2020 seems to be the Netherlands. 

 New: Australian-printed Amazon paperback now available!

Sadly, the printing cost is higher in Australia than in some other Amazon domains, so the Australian price has been set at AUS$ 24, which, on June the 3rd 2021 worked out as AUS$ 26.40 including GST (this does not include delivery, which may be free to Amazon Prime customers). The kindle version, also available in Australia, is available at the global base price of £5.95.