The Last Hamilton

Starred review from November 25, 2024
Former defense attorney Bregman’s propulsive debut weaves little-known details of American history with a frightening vision of financial armageddon. Elizabeth Hamilton Walker, Alexander Hamilton’s last descendant, works in wealth management until she jumps—or is pushed—onto subway tracks in Harlem and killed by a train. Just before her death, she’d retrieved an antique key from the Grange, Hamilton’s old New York City residence, and sent a mysterious text message to her best friend, Sarah Brockton. Together, Sarah and Elizabeth’s new husband, Ralph, dig into the circumstances of her death. Other characters include NYPD detective Deborah Schwartz, a nefarious Russian duo, and a pair of “quant jocks” who sense a shift in the market. All of them gradually become embroiled in a conspiracy involving a secret society established by Hamilton to protect U.S. gold reserves from foreign and domestic enemies. A blockbuster finale on top of the New Jersey Palisades brings the action to a satisfying close and sets the stage for a potential sequel. Dan Brown fans will relish this electrifying tale. Agent: Claudia Cross, Folio Literary.

January 1, 2025
A Machiavellian plan to dominate the world's gold reserves stretches all the way back to that guy from the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical. In Manhattan, a distraught young woman breaks into the Grange National Memorial, built by Alexander Hamilton, and frantically searches a piano for an invaluable item. Not finding it and feeling pursued, she jumps in front of a subway train to her death. The woman turns out to be newlywed Elizabeth Hamilton Walker, the last Hamilton of the title. Her middle-of-the-night text to BFF Sarah Brockman triggers a worried call from Sarah to Elizabeth's husband, Ralph. The discovery of Elizabeth's body and a dogged investigation by Det. Deborah Schwartz does little to assuage Sarah's unease. The intrepid Sarah, who works at the Bank of Hoboken, remains at the center of the novel as it caroms around a handful of other characters. While she sifts through Elizabeth's surprising documents, which warn of an ominous plot, her hapless coworker Pierce shares sensitive intelligence about gold reserves with his devious friend Timothy. Meanwhile, Schwartz tries to link a pair of broken eyeglasses to Elizabeth, and Viktor and Sergei and Dmitri and Yugov, a clutch of cartoonish thugs from Russian intelligence, plot a lot. The Hamilton premise of Bregman's thriller is audacious and potentially explosive, but it feels grafted onto the tale, more a MacGuffin than a motor. The story sits in neutral for a long time, bouncing among the characters, before heating up. Readers will decide whether the disclosures live up to the foreshadowing. An intricate thriller that simmers but rarely bubbles.

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