An American-born financier spins an almost unbelievable tale of the "poisoned" psychology afflicting business life in Vladimir Putin's Russia.By 2000, Browder, founder and CEO of the Hermitage Fund, helmed "the best performing emerging-markets fund in the world." Taking full advantage of the unprecedented investment opportunities available during post-Soviet Russia's transition from communism to capitalism, a gangland business atmosphere where oligarchs operated with impunity, Browder's firm became the biggest investor in Russia's stock market. He owed his rise in part to his willingness to fight back, to alert Western business contacts, to inform the press and to file complaints with government authorities against those corrupting the business culture. For a while, his interests coincided with those of Putin, still busy consolidating power, doing his own bit to rein in the oligarchs. By 2005, however, secure in his authority, Putin revoked Browder's visa, branding him "a threat to national security." There followed a series of moves against Browder and Hermitage, including the raiding of the company's Moscow offices on trumped-up charges of tax evasion and, most notoriously, the arrest, imprisonment, beating and death of tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had helped expose government crime. Browder's unceasing efforts to achieve justice for his murdered friend and employee culminated in the 2012 Magnitsky Act, a human rights landmark that named and shamed the responsible Russian officials. This well-paced, heartfelt narrative covers the author's personal lifehe's the son of a famed mathematician and the grandson of Earl Browder, former head of the Communist Party USAhis business career, including brushes with the likes of fraudster Robert Maxwell and swashbuckling Ron Burkle; close relationships with billionaires Edmond Safra and Beny Steinmetz; his dealings on the Magnitsky Act with U.S. senators; and Putin's vindictive retaliatory measures against Browder and the act. It may be that "Russian stories never have happy endings," but Browder's account more than compensates by ferociously unmasking Putin's thugocracy. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In Russia the gangsters are running the government, according to this fascinating firsthand story of state criminality and persecution. Browder, founder of the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management (and grandson of American Communist Party leader Earl Browder), made his fortune investing in underpriced, privatized ex-Soviet companies and prodding their corrupt managers to divulge the truth about their assets. The enmity of Russian oligarchs-and, eventually, Vladimir Putin-got him expelled from the country, whereupon his companies were seized by a group of police officials and used to steal $230 million from the Russian Treasury. When Browder's Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky unmasked the officials behind the conspiracy, Magnitsky was arrested, denied medical attention, and finally murdered in prison. Browder's narrative lays out in vivid detail the often murky mechanisms of Russia's kleptocratic economy, culminating in an engrossing account of what would surely be the heist of the century were it not so representative of business as usual. It's also a chilling, sinister portrait of a society in which the rule of law has been destroyed by those sworn to enforce it. The result is an alternately harrowing and inspiring saga of appalling crime and undeserved punishment in the Wild East. Photos. Agent: Patrick Walsh, Conville and Walsh Literary Agency (U.K.). (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Browder was a successful businessman, a pioneering investor in the emerging market that was Russia after the collapse of the Soviet empire. In the 1990s, savvy investors were seeking out his hedge fund as a way to get in on astonishingly undervalued, newly privatized businesses in Russia. But along with privatization came the oligarchs, powerful Russians who took control of previously government-operated entities. After operating successfully for years, Browder ran afoul of the oligarchs and the government. He was suddenly persona non grata, expelled from Russia, leaving his company at the mercy of a tax scam $230 million in fraud committed by Russian government officials. From London he fought back, with help from Russian colleagues, including an attorney who uncovered the criminal enterprise and was eventually murdered. Browder offers a harrowing tale of corrupt business and political tactics, traceable all the way to President Putin, and the long struggle for justice that could have cost him his life. This is a revealing thriller of Russian financial and political corruption.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2015 Booklist

When Browder, a bright young businessman, looked around for a place to make his fortune, he settled on Eastern Europe. With a shrewd knack for finding deals, he eventually became one of the biggest foreign investors in Russia. Unfortunately, the happy times didn't last. Success earned Browder the unwelcome attention of some powerful and unscrupulous people: the Russian oligarchs. This book is a stark warning to all who search for riches in Russia, offering a tour through the business world's equivalent of the heart of darkness. The voice work by Adam Grupper is strong and conveys all the moments of incredulity in the face of lies and injustice. VERDICT With high levels of corruption, blackmail, espionage, and murder, this nonfiction political thriller is sure to keep listeners engaged. It is also recommended for those with an interest in business biographies and world politics. ["Rich characterizations and well-explained financial intrigue make this a compelling read": LJ 2/1/15 review of the S. & S. hc.]-Denis Frias, Mississauga Lib. Syst., Ont. © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

THE GRANDSON of the head of the American Communist Party commits the ultimate act of rebellion: He gets a business degree from Stanford. From there, he goes on to build the biggest hedge fund in Russia. After exposing widespread government corruption, he gets expelled from the country. While he's gone, the Kremlin raids his fund and perpetrates an elaborate financial fraud. The lawyer investigating the crime is tortured and dies in prison. He avenges his lawyer's death, exposing a cover-up at the highest levels of the Putin regime. Here's the craziest part: It's all true, as told by that Stanford M.B.A., Bill Browder, in his new memoir, "Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice." It's a riveting account - and really, how could it not be? - marred only by Browder's perhaps justifiable but nevertheless grating sense of self-importance. A cocksure math whiz, Browder rebels against his lefty family - his grandfather Earl Browder twice ran for president on the Communist ticket - by embracing capitalism. Even so, his affection for his grandfather runs so deep that when his boss at a consulting firm asks him where he would like to be posted, he says Eastern Europe. So in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Browder found himself on assignment in Poland, where the government had begun privatizing state-owned companies and selling their shares at ridiculously low valuations. It was his lightbulb moment. "I now knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life," he writes. The first third of "Red Notice" recounts the engrossing tale of Browder's rise to the top of the financial world. Descriptions of his early jobs working for the disgraced financier Robert Maxwell and the highflying bank Salomon Brothers are among the book's most entertaining sections. Browder is a keen observer of Wall Street culture with a gift for making complex financial investments understandable. You find yourself cheering along as he earns a fortune investing in post-Soviet Eastern Europe, even as he beats his chest after each winning bet. "In a short time, our $25 million portfolio was transformed into $125 million," he writes. "We had made $100 million!" Browder soon begins to bump up against rapacious oligarchs and crooked management. But rather than exit the country, like many disillusioned American investors, Browder wages a campaign to clean up Russian capitalism and expose its underbelly. In 2005, the Kremlin bars him from Russia, his assets are misappropriated and one of his lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, is imprisoned and dies after being beaten by eight riot guards. Unbowed, Browder punches back. He persuades Congress to pass a law in 2012 imposing sanctions against Russian officials said to be responsible for Magnitsky's death. His actions drive the Kremlin berserk, and Putin retaliates by signing into law a ban on Americans' adopting Russian orphans. There is a warrant out for Browder's arrest in Russia, and he believes there is a real chance that Putin will have him killed. No doubt, last month's murder of the Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov has surely heightened that fear. Nemtsov had championed Browder's crusade, traveling to Washington to call on the American government to establish sanctions. "Previously, the Putin regime relied primarily on imprisonment and exile to silence opposition politicians," Browder said in a statement issued after Nemtsov's death. "Now, they have started murdering them. I'm sure this won't be the last." The narrative in "Red Notice" moves along briskly, and Browder's prose is clean. But as he morphs from iconoclastic investor to political crusader, Browder becomes less likable. At times, he is not his own best protagonist and too frequently lapses into off-putting self-aggrandizement when discussing his accomplishments. He describes his testimony before a United States House committee. "As I spoke, I noticed that the fresh-faced staffers had stopped tapping away at their BlackBerrys," he writes, and after he finished "several people in the room had tears in their eyes." He describes a human rights panel discussion with Tom Stoppard and Bianca Jagger. "I'd planned to say more, but was cut off by an outburst of applause," he writes. "One by one, people rose from their seats, and before I knew it, everyone was standing." "Red Notice" isn't the first time Browder has told his tale. He was featured on "60 Minutes" last year, and this newspaper and numerous others have profiled him. Browder acknowledges using the media to help both his investments and his quest for justice, but he also appears to relish the attention, even while it comes at great personal risk. Though he has dedicated his life's work and this compelling book to his deceased lawyer, make no mistake: Bill Browder is the hero of his own story. PETER LATTMAN is a business editor at The Times.