Another instalment of our Halsey Keetch Book Club. This in-person event will be held at our favourite venue, The Don, and there will be a choice of two books for reading over the course of the next few weeks prior to a group discussion and sharing of views and thoughts about both texts on the day. The books featured will be either ‘The Fraud’ by Zadie Smith or ‘Easy Money’ by Ben McKenzie; simply choose the one that appeals the most.

Details on the event and on the book are below:

Date: Thursday 25th April 2024, 8.15 – 9.45am
Venue: The Don private dining rooms, St Swithin’s Lane, London, EC4N 8AD
Description: Conversation and sharing of views on your book of choice – alongside coffee and breakfast around the table, and then discussion of the book and key themes amongst the group.

Spaces are limited so if you would like to come please RSVP: caroline@halseykeetch.com

1. The Fraud, by Zadie Smith

Book of the Year 2023 according to New York Times, New Yorker, Guardian, Economist, Observer, The Spectator, Financial Times, Vogue, The Times, The Oldie, i Paper, The Standard, Washington Post, Independent, Daily Express

Zadie Smith returns with her first historical novel. Kilburn, 1873. The ‘Tichborne Trial’ has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be – or an imposter. Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her novelist cousin and his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects England of being a land of façades, in which nothing is quite what it seems. Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness, his future depending on telling the right story. Growing up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica, he knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realise.

Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about how in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what’s true can prove a complicated task.

‘It’s difficult to give any idea of how extraordinary this book is. One of the great historical novels, certainly. But has any historical novel ever combined such brilliantly researched and detailed history with such intensely imagined fiction? Or such a range of living, breathing, surprising characters with such an idiosyncratically structured narrative?’ Michael Frayn

2. Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, by Ben McKenzie

From a famous actor and an experienced journalist, a wildly entertaining debunking of cryptocurrency, one of the greatest frauds in history and on course for a spectacular crash.

At the height of the pandemic, TV star Ben McKenzie (The O.C., Gotham) was the perfect mark for cryptocurrency: a dad stuck at home with some cash in his pocket, worried about his family, armed with only the vague notion that people were making heaps of money on something he―despite a degree in economics―didn’t entirely understand. Lured in by the promise of taking power from banks, possibly improving democracy, and sure, a touch of FOMO, McKenzie dove deep into blockchain, Bitcoin, and the various other coins and exchanges on which they are traded. But after scratching the surface, he had to ask, “Am I crazy, or is this all a total scam?”

In Easy Money, McKenzie enlists the help of journalist Jonathan Silverman for a caper and exposé that points in shock to the climactic final days of cryptocurrency now upon us. Weaving together stories of average traders and victims, colorful crypto “visionaries,” Hollywood’s biggest true believers, anti-crypto whistleblowers, and government agents searching for solutions at the precipice of a major crash, Easy Money is an on-the-ground look at a perfect storm of 2008 Housing Bubble–level irresponsibility and criminal fraud potentially ten times more devastating than Bernie Madoff.