The Swiss Account
I want to bring to your attention The Swiss Account, a fine novel by co-authors Dick and Phyllis Kluger, published this month by Rare Bird Books (with distribution by Simon & Schuster).
Full Disclosure #1 – the Klugers are lifelong close friends of mine. Full Disclosure #2 – The very idea that a contemporary of mine (classmates at Horace Mann School and roommates at Princeton University) and his wife for the past 70 years can write such a splendid page-turner as this fills me with pride – and, let’s face it, a substantial dose of envy. Full Disclosure #3 – Forget #1 and #2: I would feel the same way about The Swiss Account if it were penned by a 35-year-old mortal enemy of mine!
Three years ago, my August blog entry featured the publication of Dick’s excellent novel titled Hamlet’s Children, which told an important story of life in Denmark during the country’s Nazi occupation in World War II. Although the text was superb, the fact that Dick was then nearing 90 caused me to speculate that it might be the last book I’d be seeing from him – but how wrong I was!
I should have known better that this leading social historian who authored a number of non-fiction classics – most notably, Simple Justice, the definitive account of the Supreme Court’s outlawing of racial segregation, and Ashes to Ashes, laying bare the cigarette industry’s assault on public health, which won Dick the Pulitzer Prize in 1997 – was not going to call it quits.
In addition to his historical works, Dick has written six worthy novels and co-authored two previous novels with his wife, Phyllis. She, in turn, became a fiber artist, creating a series of striking satirical quilts that were exhibited and won prizes in shows around the country, and also producing two notable crafts books, A Needlepoint Gallery of Patterns from the Past and Victorian Designs for Neddlepoint. I’ll have more to say later on their lifelong collaboration.
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Let me turn now to The Swiss Account, which Dick has characterized in a nutshell:
“Astonished to learn that her father, an industrial mogul, was also a longtime tax-dodger who left her a fortune in stocks and bonds stashed in a secret account at a Zurich bank, Lynn Hazletine, a square-shooting real estate agent in Bucks County, Pa., faces a wrenching moral dilemma: Should she keep the clandestine toxic treasure so that she and her family can live in luxury ever after – but in constant peril of being apprehended by IRS agents and slammed behind bars for many years? Or, as a patriotic citizen, should she reveal Daddy’s booty to the U.S. Treasury, which, in view of the mountainous unpaid back taxes on the Swiss account’s income – and penalties for the chronic delinquency – is all but certain to confiscate the overflowing pot of gold and say, ‘Thanks a bunch, lady?’”
It’s an excruciating dilemma that she has to face, and it plunges the couple into adventures exposing them to the perils of forgery, blackmail, kidnapping and academic politicking. I found the characters to be vivid, the prose first-rate and the colorful background details authentic.
In an interview he gave, Dick elaborated on the plot as follows:
“Our main characters, they’re very different from most Swiss account owners. For one thing, they’re hardly in the chips. Lynn Hazeltine is a real estate agent in semi-rural Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and her husband Jerry is an art history professor at a small liberal arts college. They have to work hard to make ends meet – paying for their two kids’ care, feeding and schooling, aging parents’ subsistence needs, and a hefty mortgage among other things. Whereas more than a few Swiss account owners got rich by shady means – as drug kingpins, for example, war profiteers, scam artists, bribe-taking politicians, or garden-variety larcenists. The Hazeltines, by sharp contrast, have been squeaky clean dudes until – "
At which point, Phyllis noted: “As readers will see, our straight-shooting couple explore every possible way out of their dilemma before making their decision.”
To which Dick added, “And so our story is what happens to Lynn, Jerry, and their family as a result – their joys and perils, their earnest efforts to compensate for veering off the strictly straight and narrow path – "
Here Phyllis broke in: “Hey,don’t give away the whole damn story, sweetheart.”
When the interviewer asked why readers today should care about the moral dilemma facing the characters, Dick replied as follows.
“It’s a legitimate question. We contend that although our protagonist couple may seem like relatively privileged characters, nobody in this life – regardless of their social or economic status – escapes without confronting deep pain, anguish, and, all too often, tragic loss. Society’s so-called “winners” are by no means all just happy-go-lucky success stories or soulless abusers and exploiters or “elitists” who scorn the plight of those less blessed. One way or another we all meet with misfortune and undergo our own kinds of struggles and demons, as Lynn and Jerry Hazeltine do in The Swiss Account – and they are no less worthy of our commiseration – and admiration as well if and when they manage to endure or overcome them. So that’s a large part of what we’re trying to express in narrating our “privileged” characters’ adventures and misadventures.”
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A number of prominent folk have commented on the book. Here are some of their reactions:
“Travelers will enjoy revisiting the streets and slopes of Paris, Zurich and elsewhere; detective story savants will muse over the promise of a near-perfect crime; and all readers will relish the sheer pleasure of a thoroughly captivating yarn.”
“I never dreamed that the arcane world of secret Swiss banking could serve as the backdrop for a spellbinding novel that surgically probes issues ranging from tax fraud and global conspiracies to art forgery, tensions in academia, and terrorism in tribal Africa. It’s an enthralling read I couldn’t put down.”
“With the storytelling verve of classic Le Carré and the emotional precision of Roth or Tyler, The Swiss Account unfolds like a velvet-gloved indictment of privilege, secrecy, and legacy. This is an inheritance tale with teeth.”
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I was interested in hearing the two of them work together on a book like this.
Dick: “What we didn’t do was sit side by side on a piano bench in front of a PC and take turns writing the next sentence.”
Phyllis: “In fact, we had gotten in the habit of taking daily walks around public areas near our home in Berkeley, California, and those walkabouts provided the perfect opportunity to kick around how the book’s plot might evolve.”
Dick: “After we determined the main storyline, we then proceeded one chapter at a time – I’d do the first draft and then Phyllis would go over it with a fine-tooth comb – word by word, sentence by sentence – "
Phyllis: “And not just for typos and spelling, more for word choice, clarity of meaning, a character’s motivation for whatever he or she did or said. Also, to cut down on the verbiage – Dick occasionally overdoes it, not trusting readers’ imagination.”
Dick: “Happily my author’s ego doesn’t bruise easily, but sometimes I’ll resist for a while. Mostly, though, I take Phyl’s suggestions to heart, and then we’d exchange the manuscript several times until we agree it’s polished enough to move on to the next chapter—which often changes from how we first thought the story would go.”
Phyllis: “That’s the point – a novel is a living thing, and a good one evolves and grows as it goes, whether one or two people are writing it. But we don’t recommend more than two – committees botch the creative spirit; a partnership can stir it.”
Since the timeline of the book is a few years ago, I asked Dick if secret Swiss bank accounts protecting foreigners still exist. Here was his reply
“Of course. But last we heard the U.S. Treasury has successfully twisted the arms of Swiss bankers to report the names of all their American account-holders or else their banks would be barred from doing business in the U.S. Tax dodgers now have to hide their swag in risky island states like Cyprus and Barbados. And those banks as well may soon feel the IRS’s wrath.”
My final question to Dick – Any more books in your future?”
“Well, I do have a new novel that I’m in the process of completing . . . .”
I knew it!
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If the book is not available in your local bookstore, click on either of the links below to purchase a copy.