Nicholas Thorneycroft wakes up in Luxembourg unable to remember the previous night. He's pretty sure he had female company, but why doesn't he know who she was?

THE CANDIDATE is an intelligent thriller novella which catches your attention from the start. Nicholas cannot find his own office key card. As he occasionally handles sensitive documents, he'd rather know the reason. He begins to suspect that he was drugged by the unknown woman.

Luxembourg is a small country, handling high finance and European projects from its French-speaking low tax base. The location is thoroughly well described, from the one English pub selling Continental beers to the icy roads on the hill leading down to the Petrusse River and the floodlit quaint castle. Nick started as a sports writer and now headhunts for a major firm, making him a rounded character. His boss asks him to help employ a female Russian banker, who'll be paid several times Nick's own salary. Nick reckons that this glamorous candidate Yekaterina may be his visitor, and he learns that a Russian firm Xanant is considering taking over his own firm. While there doesn't seem to be a connection, he decides that some background research into the lady candidate is needed.

The characters in this book are sharply written and believable. Nick's past girlfriend turns up in town when he's preoccupied; she seems emotionally unstable. Thugs smash down his apartment door, and Nick's own bosses would rather believe the prospect of big bonuses than take Nick's word that something sinister is in progress. Banking, Daniel Pembrey is telling us, is multinational, occasionally corrupt and corrupting.

Daniel Pembrey is writing about places and jobs where he has worked, just as he did in full-length novel "The Woman Who Stopped Traffic." With his flair for realism and insider knowledge of high finance, he doesn't just push the door open for his readers, he throws it wide to reveal the good, the bad and the dangerous. THE CANDIDATE is a fine lead-in to his work.