The Clayton Account

An exhilarating international thriller about a numbered Swiss bank account that switches between London, Zurich, New York, and the cocaine fields of Columbia

Bill Vidal was born in Argentina and educated in England. He lived and worked in the USA, South America, the Middle East, South East Asia and Europe before settling with his wife and twin children in East Kent. In recent years he has slowed down his business commitments to devote more time to writing and to his lifelong love for aeroplanes. Bill's articles about flying have been published in leading newspapers and magazines. The Clayton Account is his first novel.

Thomas Clayton is a City trader working the markets in London's Square Mile and living, financially, on borrowed time. But when he returns home to New York for his father's funeral to discover he has been left nearly $50 million in a numbered Swiss bank account, he's at a complete loss to explain how his professor father could have come by such a sum. Whatever the explanation, the mysterious windfall has come at exactly the right time. 
 
So he travels to Zurich, secures the funds, and tells his wife to make an offer on her dream country mansion. What Tom doesn't know yet is that his father was being used as a 'ghost' to clean up dirty money by a New York laundry operation: really the money belongs to Carlos Morales, Medellin's biggest cocaine baron. 
 
Tom's actions in Europe spark a murderous turf war in the Americas between the cartels of Medellin and Cali, involving a cast of bent lawyers, cops, undercover DEA - and transatlantic assassins who'll stop at nothing or no one to make Tom pay his debt...

Bill Vidal

1936. As General Franco's Nationalists march on Madrid in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War, the Republican government authorises the evacuation of the country's gold reserves. 7900 crates of gold leave Cartagena for Russia - but only 7800 arrive. The hundred missing boxes, if found today, would be worth over $200 million... 
 
2004. Jack Hadley, a British visiting professor at the University of Salamanca, his girlfriend Mercedes and the enigmatic civil servant Rosa Uribe have been arrested on drug charges in the wake of an evening's excessive partying. Hadley is facing prison, disgrace and possibly the end of his career, until the Spanish Secret Service offer him a surprising reprieve: Hadley is about to visit Cuba to interview the reclusive revolutionary Jesús Florin - better known as the 'The Aztec'. The Spanish intelligence chief believes Florin knows the location of the missing gold and coerces Hadley into his service. 
 
Switching between Florin's past and 2004, The Aztec is a gripping international thriller full of double agents and deception, where no-one seems to be sure who's pulling the strings or why.

The Aztec

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

sectionTitle

isEnabled

anchor

anchorLabel

prhuk/featured-book

prhuk/praise-section

maxBooks

showViewMore

prhuk/books-section

hideAuthorAlert

formName

iterableDivision

iterableBrand

buttonText

description

heading

legalText

successHeading

successText

image

alignment

variation

prhuk/email-section

prhuk/series-section

prhuk/biography-section

prhuk/articles-section

prhuk-authors

Join our newsletter for 10% off at the Penguin Shop

The Odyssey

Little Black Classics Box Set

Knit Repair

Summer

Bill Vidal

Praise for The Aztec

Riveting novel of suspense

Books by Bill Vidal

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter