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WORK TITLE: Damnation
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.peter-beck.net/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: Switzerland
NATIONALITY: German
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:M.B.A., doctorate.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, crime novelist, and business consultant. Served as an executive board member of a large Swiss company and sat on several nonexecutive boards.
MIILITARY:Swiss Army.
MEMBER:International Thriller Writers, Syndika.
WRITINGS
Novels published in German.
SIDELIGHTS
Swiss crime writer Peter Beck studied psychology, philosophy, and economics in college in Bern, Switzerland. A cyclist when he was in the Swiss Army, Beck has a black belt in Judo. Fluent in both English and German, Beck is a business consultant who helps shape companies’ culture, organization, and strategy. He is also the author of the “Tom Winter” series of thrillers, first published in German. In an interview on the Big Thrill Online, Beck said that the biggest influence on him as a writer was John le Carré, adding: “He lived in my hometown Bern for some time, and he even set some of his scenes here. I admire him for very cleverly connecting the world’s turmoil with Smiley’s destiny.”
The English debut of the “Tom Winter” series is titled Damnation. Beck wrote the book in 2008 and 2009 after he was laid off his job. He was establishing his own consulting company but had extra time while waiting to garner more clients. Upon finishing the book, Beck sent it out to ten top German publishers and was rejected by all of them. Beck sent the manuscript to ten more publishers with the same results. When he was taken on by a top literary agency in Zurich, Switzerland, he hoped his luck would change. Two years passed and his book still had not been sold. Then one of the young literary agents at the agency went out on her own, and Beck joined her. She finally found a publisher. Beck since has had two books in the series published in German, with Damnation, the first book in the series, published in English in 2018, several years after appearing in German.
Damnation introduces readers to Tom Winter, a former head of the Bern police department’s special forces unit. Beck told SWI swissinfo.ch website contributor Clare O’Dea that it took him some time to develop the character, noting that he “wanted him to be free to investigate internationally” and nixed having the character in Interpol because he wanted to avoid a “bureaucratic setting” or “a guy in a suit” adding: “I thought a lot about what the character should embody. It was a deductive process, and finally I arrived at the idea that he would be the head of security at a Swiss bank.”
In the novel, Tom is looking ahead to a night out with his assistant, Anne, with whom he is falling in love. Then the helicopter Anne is flying in along with one of the bank’s rich clients from the Middle East, Al-Badar, blows up, killing everyone on board. When Tom examines pieces of the helicopter, he finds explosive residue, telling him that the explosion was no accident. Crushed, Tom sets out to find the culprits. Initially, Tom thinks that Al-Badar, son of a Saudi Arabian king, was targeted by extremists who wanted to stop construction of a nuclear power plant project he was working on for installation in Cairo, Egypt. Then Winter realizes that he had changed places with Anne and was supposed to be on the helicopter. Perhaps, Tom was the intended target all along. Nevertheless, Tom still considers that American interests may have blown up the helicopter because they were not content to allow Middle Eastern countries develop nuclear technology.
Tom is befriended by Fatima Hakim, the chief executive officer (CEO) of a large Egyptian energy company that is a client of the bank. Tom and Fatima work together as the investigation takes them from Cairo to Norway, Boston, Massachusetts, and Switzerland. However, no matter where they go, they are being tracked. The two soon realize that their lives are in danger. “The action is fast-paced, the high-finance dealings ring true, and Winter is an impressively modern Bond figure,” wrote Roland Person for Xpress Reviews. Angela Crowther, writing for the Promoting Crime Fiction by Lizzie Hayes website, noted the “enormous pace” of the action adding: Damnation “reads like a James Bond film and is just as entertaining.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, February 19, 2018, review of Damnation, p. 60.
Xpress Reviews, March 2, 2018, Roland Person, review of Damnation.
ONLINE
Big Thrill Online, http://www.thebigthrill.org/ (March 31, 2018), “Damnation by Peter Beck,” author interview.
Crime Review, http://crimereview.co.uk/ (May 12, 2018), John Cleal, review of Damnation.
Peter Beck Website, https://www.peter-beck.net (July 7, 2018).
Promoting Crime Fiction by Lizzie Hayes, https://promotingcrime.blogspot.com/ (July 7, 2018), Angela Crowther, review of Damnation.
SWI swissinfo.ch, https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/ (April 1, 2018), Clare O’Dea, “Thriller Brings a Touch of Noir to Swiss Banking,” author profile.
Peter Beck studied Psychology, Philosophy and Economics in Bern, where he also gained a doctorate in Psychology. He did his military service as a cyclist in the Swiss Army and has a black belt in judo. Having done an MBA in Manchester, UK, he went on to become an executive board member of a large Swiss company and sat on several non-executive boards.
Today he is his own boss and divides his time between writing the Tom Winter thrillers and supporting businesses in shaping their corporate culture. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers and the German-speaking crime writers' association, Syndikat. He is fluent in English.
International Suspense, Latest Books
Damnation by Peter Beck
2 months ago by ITW
0
Dead clients are bad for business, something that Tom Winter, head of security at a private Swiss bank, knows only too well. When a helicopter explosion kills a valuable client and a close colleague, Winter teams up with the mysterious Egyptian businesswoman Fatima Hakim to expose the truth behind their deaths.
Together they follow the money trail around the world and back into the Swiss mountains, the NSA watching their every move. As they start closing in on the truth, Winter and Fatima turn from being the hunters to the hunted, finding themselves in a deadly, high-stakes race against the clock.
Award-winning author Peter Beck spent some time discussing his latest thriller, DAMNATION, with The Big Thrill:
What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
Bloody fingernails! I’m Swiss and since it’s often said that the Swiss are a bit boring, I hope the readers will be surprised how fast-paced DAMNATION is. I’ve worked hard to create a different hero and heart-stopping cliffhangers with scenes around the world and in our spectacular Swiss mountains. Hence the bloody fingernails.
How does this book make a contribution to the genre?
There are not many Swiss thrillers out there…
The hero, Tom Winter, is head of security at a Swiss private bank. This role is unique in the world of thriller writing. Winter has a lot of freedom and room to maneuver. So, as an author, I can send him all over the world. That’s fun to write.
The name “Winter” was picked deliberately, by the way. It goes with the snow and ice in the Swiss mountains and works well in both German and English.
Was there anything new you discovered, or that surprised you, as you wrote this book?
I wrote the German original ten years ago, around the time when the financial crisis was happening. I already knew that there were great villains in the banking world. But the deeper I dug, the more I discovered how ruthlessly they do business behind the picture-perfect scenes. Since a good hero ultimately needs a really bad opponent, that helped me to shape the Tom Winter series.
There’s another thing that surprised me. DAMNATION was translated by Jamie Bulloch, a highly regarded translator. He transformed my German sentences into a really elegant read. Initially, I was worried that my characters wouldn’t be true after the translation. But now, for me, DAMNATION reads even better in English. Maybe my baby has kind of grown up and developed its own personality.
No spoilers, but what can you tell us about your book that we won’t find in the jacket copy or the PR material?
That Tom Winter is not a superhero but a regular guy with a past. Like the rest of us, he has his faults and makes mistakes. He has a cat, doesn’t say much, cracks dry jokes and longs for intimacy and peace.
For me it’s really important that Winter has strong values and tries to do the right thing, despite the bank’s boss, who’s only interested in making the biggest profit possible. Along the way, Winter grows with his dilemmas when he’s caught between a rock and a hard place. We all face these quandaries at one time or another, albeit usually on a smaller scale.
What authors or books have influenced your career as a writer, and why?
If I had to choose only one, it would have to be John le Carré. He lived in my hometown Bern for some time, and he even set some of his scenes here. I admire him for very cleverly connecting the world’s turmoil with Smiley’s destiny.
But you’d find all the usual suspects on my bookshelves, from John Grisham to Stig Larsson. I love Tana French from Ireland, the Norwegian Jo Nesbø with his Harry Hole and of course Lee Child. Not unlike his Jack Reacher, Tom Winter roams freely, but always finds himself in situations where he has to intervene.
And last but definitely not least, I’ve read all the Mark Gimenez thrillers, who dubbed DAMNATION ‘A terrific thriller! Smart and savvy.’
*****
Peter Beck studied Psychology, Philosophy and Economics in Bern, where he also gained a doctorate in Psychology. He did his military service as a cyclist in the Swiss Army and has a black belt in judo.
Having done an MBA in Manchester, UK, he went on to become an executive board member of a large Swiss company and sat on several non-executive boards.
Today he is his own boss and divides his time between writing the Tom Winter thrillers and supporting businesses in shaping their culture, organization and strategy. He is fluent in English.
His thriller DAMNATION (2018) was originally published in German (Emons Verlag, 2013), has now been translated by Jamie Bulloch and is brought to you by Point Blank, an imprint of Oneworld, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize.
To learn more about Peter, please visit his website.
Thriller brings a touch of noir to Swiss banking
By Clare O'Dea
Culture
Law and order
Reuse article
This content was published on April 1, 2018 11:00 AM
Apr 1, 2018 - 11:00
Peter Beck studied psychology, philosophy and economics in the Swiss capital, Bern.
(Oneworld Publications)
While Scandinavian Noir is well established in English-language publishing, Switzerland has until now been a blank space on the map of popular crime fiction. Swiss author Peter Beck is trying to change all that with his gritty new hero Tom Winter. Clare O’Dea went to investigate.
The mild-mannered, casually-dressed man I meet in Bern train station does not look like he could have anything to do with exploding helicopters, death-defying car chases, cold-blooded murder, high finance intrigue and obscene luxury.
Yet this is the world that Swiss author Peter Beck
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has created in the first of his three financial thrillers, Damnation
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. The only thing Beck has in common with his protagonist, a former special forces commander and head of security with a Swiss bank, is his nationality and a taste for espresso.
Beck’s face lights up when he talks about Tom Winter. But the character didn’t come to him in a single flash of inspiration. Almost like a recruitment process, Beck looked hard for the right hero. His approach was clearly influenced by his background in psychology and corporate development.
“I wanted him to be free to investigate internationally so that ruled out a commissar-type protagonist. I considered an Interpol connection but I didn’t want my character to be in a bureaucratic setting. I also didn’t want a guy in a suit. I thought a lot about what the character should embody. It was a deductive process, and finally I arrived at the idea that he would be the head of security at a Swiss bank.”
Winter, Tom Winter
Winter bears all the key hallmarks of protagonists in the genre: unbeatable hand-to-hand combat and marksmanship skills, a beguiling way with women, and an ability to get out of impossibly tight situations without losing his nerve. But he is also a cat owner and a man of simple tastes who has built up a web of useful relationships.
In Damnation, Tom Winter criss-crosses the globe looking for connections on the trail of an investment consortium which could be involved in the death of one of the bank’s wealthiest Arab clients.
(Oneworld Publications)
The investigation is personal because Winter’s girlfriend and colleague was also killed in the attack. The conspiracy turns out to be greater and more nefarious than Winter suspects, and he finds himself up against ruthless adversaries who are planning a breath-taking feat of financial disruption and physical destruction.
Insider knowledge
As we stroll around the author’s home town of Bern, where some of the action in Damnation takes place, Beck points out a non-descript entrance on a shopping street. “That’s just how I imagine the exterior of Winter’s bank would look like.” Beck’s insider knowledge of the Swiss setting adds authenticity to his writing.
Beck has drawn on Switzerland’s leading role and reputation in the world of high finance. With deals passing through Swiss banks that can shape the destiny of entire countries, there is plenty of juicy material to be reimagined in the pages of a thriller.
The other signature of Beck’s work is the inspiration of Anglo-American literature. He has always read in English and counts Le Carré, Grisham and Giminez among his influences. When Beck got a two-book deal for his financial thrillers with a London publisher, it was a dream come true for the Swiss writer.
Power asymmetry
As is usually the case, Beck’s path to publication was no overnight success story. Sitting in a fashionable Bern café with an overabundance of cushions, he reveals the struggle he went through. Damnation was written in 2008 and 2009 after Beck was made redundant. During the months he was waiting for his new self-employed business to take off, he turned to writing.
“When I finished the first manuscript I sent it out to the top ten German publishers but I didn’t get any response. The power asymmetry in publishing is cruel.”
Undeterred, Beck sent it out to the next ten on the list, still to no avail. An apparent breakthrough came when Beck was taken on by a big agency in Zurich, but this wasn’t the happily-ever-after Beck was expecting. Two years went by and the agency couldn’t sell his books.
“Then the young agent who was in charge of me went out on her own and I left with her. She tried again in Germany and found a publisher in Cologne that took the first book.”
That was 2012 and Beck’s first two books were brought out in German to popular acclaim. He still had his eye on the UK but his agent didn’t work in that market. They parted company and he began the hunt for a London representative.
Eventually Beck’s new agent got him a two-book translation deal with Point Blank, the crime imprint of Oneworld Publications, which had great success in recent years with two Man Booker winners.
The publisher got the award-winning translator Jamie Bulloch on board and Damnation, the first book in English is about to be launched in April 2018.
Crossing over
Since he first came up with the concept of the Winter series in 2008, Beck’s dream was to cross over into English. “I’m a long-distance runner. I don’t give up easily.” That tenacity is one more thing Beck has in common with his resourceful hero.
Beck has come a long way since he compulsively read all 75 of Simenon’s Maigret novels as a teenager. He always loved writing and got enough encouragement at different stages of his career, from his school days to his years in academia, and later as an MBA student and business executive, to believe he could one day become an author.
With his business hat on, he identified a niche. “I love Scandinavian noir and Scottish crime fiction too. I asked myself why there was no Swiss noir? The Swiss brand is that they are boring, they’re clean. I wanted something in the thriller or noir style. I did not see any other domestic thriller writers in German in Switzerland.”
Literary echoes
When the interview was over, I took my leave of Beck close to the Swiss parliament building, a scene that felt curiously familiar. Later I remembered why and found the relevant passage in Damnation when Tom Winter shows his love interest, Egyptian businesswoman Fatima Hakim, around Bern on a warm August day.
“They strolled to the huge square in front of the federal parliament. Children skipped around screaming in the delight, running through the water features and trying to avoid the fountains that sprayed vertically into the air.
‘Underneath here are the Swiss gold reserves,’ said Winter. ‘Look, that’s the national bank. Can you see the house number?’
‘The national bank is Number 1,’ Fatima said in surprise. ‘Not the parliament?’
‘That shows you the priorities in Switzerland.’”
A few pages later, the two are being shot at on a glacier. I’m glad to report that my journey home was uneventful.
Damnation
Publishers Weekly. 265.8 (Feb. 19, 2018): p60.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
Damnation
Peter Beck, trans, from the German by Jamie Bulloch. Point Blank, $24.99 (480p) ISBN 9781-78607-327-3
Tom Winter, the head of security for a private Swiss bank, investigates a helicopter crash in the Swiss Alps in German author Beck's disappointing first novel and series launch. Among the dead is Muhammed Al-Bader, an important bank client and relative of the Saudi Arabian king. Tom determines that the crash was no accident when he detects explosive residue on material recovered from the helicopter. Al-Bader, who handled his wealthy family's investments, had many enemies, including those wanting to delay his project to build a nuclear power station in Cairo, American interests unhappy with Middle East countries turning to nuclear technology, and a troublesome relative. To unravel the conspiracy, Tom travels with Fatima Hakim, an attractive executive working for a client company of the bank, to Cairo, Norway, Boston, and Switzerland. At each destination, the two discover that someone knows their whereabouts and threatens their safety. Lengthy, unnecessary digressions and scenes that contribute nothing to the narrative mitigate the suspense. Agent: Tanja Howarth, Tonja Howarth Literary Agency (U.K.). (Apr.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Damnation." Publishers Weekly, 19 Feb. 2018, p. 60. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A529357530/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=68916c26. Accessed 28 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A529357530
Beck, Peter. Damnation
Roland Person
Xpress Reviews. (Mar. 2, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
Full Text:
Beck, Peter. Damnation. Point Blank: Oneworld. Apr. 2018. 480p. tr. from German by Jamie Bulloch. ISBN 9781786073273. $24.99; ebk. ISBN 9781786073266. F
[DEBUT] Tom Winter heads security for a private Swiss bank with wealthy Middle Eastern clients. When his associate and lover and an important Saudi client die in a helicopter crash in the Alps, he quickly determines that they were murdered. Later, Winter and the Saudi's twin are attacked, but Winter manages to kill four assailants. It's increasingly clear that there is a mole at the bank, part of an international plot to get into a highly secure data center beneath a mountain in order to disrupt world financial markets. He teams up with a beautiful Egyptian CEO and they travel to Norway and the United States seeking to unravel this threat. Back in the Alps near the end, he manages a literal cliff-hanger while trying to defuse a bomb.
Verdict Making his English-language debut, Beck has a doctorate in psychology, an MBA, and corporate experience to go with a judo black belt. This is the first in a projected series featuring Tom Winter. Although the book is too long and wordy, the action is fast-paced, the high-finance dealings ring true, and Winter is an impressively modern Bond figure.--Roland Person, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Person, Roland. "Beck, Peter. Damnation." Xpress Reviews, 2 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A532075554/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c6d1247e. Accessed 28 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A532075554
Wednesday, 14 March 2018
‘Damnation’ by Peter Beck
Translated by Jamie Bulloch
Published by Point Blank,
1 March 2018.
ISBN 978-1-78607-327-3(HB)
Tom Winter, Ex Commander of Bern Police’s Special Unit and currently head of security at a posh Swiss private bank, has plans for the evening – and hopefully the night - ahead. His plans involve Anne, his deputy and right-hand girl with whom he is falling in love.
His plans are quite literally blown apart when the helicopter carrying Anne and one of the bank’s rich, middle eastern clients, Al-Badar, explodes, killing the pilot and both his passengers. This was no accident and Winter sets out to discover exactly who engineered the crash and why. As the story races backwards and forwards between Switzerland, Egypt and the USA, Winter is helped by past and present colleagues from the bank, airport security staff and the police and security services.
At first it is thought that Al-Badar was the target, and that extremists wanting to stop the flow of Arabic money to the West were behind the first and subsequent assassinations. Doubts are sown when somebody points out that Winter should have been in the helicopter - he had only changed places with Anne at the last minute. Winter is soon befriended by the beautiful and brilliant Fatima. In her capacity as CEO of a large Egyptian energy company Fatima helps Winter unravel the good guys from the bad guys. Between hair-raising missions, they also console each other in the time honoured way.
Damnation travels along at an enormous pace. With its background of financiers and banks all using fair means and foul to get their hands on Arab oil billions for their equity funds, this book reads like a James Bond film and is just as entertaining. We are told that Damnation is the opener to a series of Tom Winter tales. If the others are as good as this one, we are all in for a treat.
------
Reviewer Angela Crowther
Peter Beck studied Psychology, Philosophy and Economics in Bern, where he also gained a doctorate in Psychology. He did his military service as a cyclist in the Swiss Army and has a black belt in judo. Having done an MBA in Manchester, UK, he went on to become an executive board member of a large Swiss company and sat on several non-executive boards. Today he is his own boss and divides his time between writing the Tom Winter thrillers and supporting businesses in shaping their corporate culture. He is a member of the International Thriller Writers and the German-speaking crime writers' association, Syndikat. He is fluent in English. Damnation is his debut in English. The thriller was originally published in German (Emons 2013), now translated by Jamie Bulloch and brought to you by Point Blank (2018), an imprint of Oneworld, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize.
Damnation
by Peter Beck (translated by Jamie Bulloch)
Former Swiss police special ops detective Tom Winter faces an international plot to dominate the world’s financial markets and opponents who will stop at nothing to achieve their goal.
Review
Peter Beck’s English debut blows away the idea of Switzerland as a beautiful, sleepy and extremely expensive country and instead takes a trip into the seething world of high finance behind those discreet brass plates which denote its secretive business as the banking mecca for the world’s mega-rich individuals and corporations.
The author, an MBA from Manchester and former executive board member of a large Swiss company, now divides his time between writing thrillers and supporting businesses in shaping their corporate culture.
Beck speaks fluent English but employs the superb translation talents of Jamie Bulloch to introduce UK readers to his popular hero Tom Winter. The result is a smooth, fast-moving and mostly credible story that is almost – unlikely as it sounds – a Swiss version of James Bond.
The story is told by Winter, former commander of a Swiss police special ops group and now head of security for one of the country’s largest and most influential merchant banks. Despite his high-flying post he is surprisingly normal, preferring the restoration of his mountain home to the glitz of the world of high finance.
When a helicopter crash kills an important Arab clients and a member of the bank’s staff with whom Winter had a growing personal relationship, he sets out to discover the truth and it soon becomes clear this was no accident. The mega-rich Saudi, head of a group of disparate clans in the oil rich nation, was on his way to meet executives from an Egyptian company that is leading efforts to build Cairo’s first nuclear power station to meet a huge demand for energy.
Winter follows the trail to Egypt, only to witness the killing of the local firm’s CEO. He is then led to Bergen in Norway, where the dead Saudi had been attending a secretive conference, and then to Boston, where he meets a mysterious professor who heads an investment partnership whose clients include a number of wealthy Middle Eastern investors financing US projects.
Winter, along with his new personal interest, also the new CEO of the Egyptian company, become entangled with the US security services who suspect the Arabs of funding jihadi terrorist groups and the US company of having links to white supremacist extremists.
As you would expect from a novel centred on the financial world, there are some pertinent, sharp and informed opinions about American attitudes to Arab investment and the broader aspects of the global marketplace and foreign ownership of companies and infrastructure. These slot in seamlessly – as does as fair amount of product placement, inevitable when writing about the super-rich.
As Winter gets closer to the truth, he slowly uncovers a devastating plot designed to unsettle global financial markets. Many of the action sequences take place in the beautiful Swiss landscape of mountains, rivers and lakes leading to a finale on a spectacular scale – more Cubby Broccoli than Ian Fleming!
Despite this, Beck’s English language debut manages to be fast, smart and savvy with touches of the Bond laconic coolness. The book is extremely well-researched, especially the behind the scenes tensions of the banking world, and this enjoyable thriller, with a good story and plenty of action marks Beck out as a name to watch in the action thriller genre.
Reviewed 12 May 2018 by John Cleal