9 h 58 minAudiobook16 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when the promise of easy money becomes stronger than good judgment?
In The Plunderers, Edwin Lefevre takes you into a world of New York money markets, brokers, offices and deals. Men chase wealth, and schemes grow around their ambitions. The danger lies not only in what people stand to lose, but in what they are willing to believe.
Lefevre brings a financial writer’s close attention to the way people talk and think about money. Con artists and market schemes depend on trust, while greed makes clever people take risks they would warn others against. This is a story of speculation where the wish for more puts judgment under pressure.
What you’ll discover
- Wall Street from within Enter the offices and deals of a financial world Lefevre knows closely.
- The lure of more Follow the pull of easy money as ambition begins to cloud sound judgment.
- Trust becomes a weakness Explore how a scheme depends on persuading other people to believe in it.
- People revealed by money Watch what people say about wealth reveal how they think and what they want.
- Deals without the jargon Find plain explanations that bring financial schemes into focus without burying their human stakes.
Who will love it
This book is for readers who enjoy clever swindles, comic dialogue, and a city full of brokers, reporters, and millionaires. It suits anyone who likes puzzles solved by wit and the pleasure of watching proud people discover how much they missed.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Odd advertisements start the trap
- A colonel buys pearls for a princess
- A stranger brings ten letters and a bet
- A banker misses his own office
- A miner arrives with fifteen tons of gold
- Friendship, a nurse, and a jealous husband
- A taxi, a talisman, and a strange question
- Sweet peas, a father, and a reporter
- Why the swindles work and how they read
Who’s who
- W. W. LovellA hoarse, black-gloved man with a scar who hires odd helpers for tasks that seem to make no sense.
- Colonel LowtherA haughty, neck-jerking man who claims to serve the Duke of Connaught and wants pearls for a princess at the lowest price.
- James B. RobisonA Parisian-looking stranger with a Yankee voice who says he will double one hundred thousand dollars on Wall Street in a week.
- Amos KidderA financial editor who loves a good story and keeps getting drawn into the strangest deals on the Street.
- Alfred JerninghamA square-jawed man, said to be a Klondike miner with fifteen tons of gold dust in a hotel engine room, who says he wants his place in society.
- Francis WolfeA handsome idler, favorite of the chorus girls and deep in debt, who takes a salaried job as a rich man's friend.
- Tom MerriwetherThe imaginative heir to a railroad fortune, who wants to know what the calm man at 777 Fifth Avenue is after.
- E. H. MerriwetherA small, iron-nerved railroad magnate who hides his love for his only son behind a poker face.
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- Audiobook
- 9 h 58 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 16 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
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The Plunderers
by Edwin Lefevre · 1916
A voiceless man in black gloves hires twitching strangers for jobs that ask them to do nothing at all.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Plunderers is a book of four linked tales by Edwin Lefevre, an American writer who spent his working life around Wall Street. It is set in New York in the early 1910s, when jewelers, newspapers, trust companies, and railroad kings ran the city's money.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Odd advertisements start the trap
The first tale, The Pearls of Princess Patricia, opens on Christmas Eve at the advertising window of the New York Herald. A clean-shaven man in black clothes and black gloves can speak only in a hoarse whisper. Clerk Ralph Carroll leans close and prices his strange notice, which asks for a twitching man who likes to think about himself.
When the stranger takes off a glove to find a five-dollar bill, Carroll sees a long ivory-colored scar running from his knuckles up under his cuff. He remembers it afterward, along with the voice. On Saturday morning ten men with twitching necks and limbs wait outside Room 888 of the St. Iago Building. The door bears the name of the Acme Vibrator Company and its manager, W. W. Lovell.
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What is The Plunderers about?
It is a set of four linked tales in which a band of gentleman swindlers targets rich New Yorkers, including jewelers, a financier, a trust company president, and a railroad magnate, using disguises, false clues, and careful study of each victim.
Who are the Plunder Recovery Syndicate?
They are the unseen gang behind all four tales. They claim to take only wealth they consider tainted, and they send polite, witty letters to their victims. Different members appear in each tale under different names.
Is The Plunderers a novel or a collection of short stories?
It is four connected stories rather than one continuous plot. Each has its own victim and setting, while recurring characters such as the reporter Amos Kidder and the Syndicate itself link them into one book.
The author
Edwin Lefevre
1871–1943 · American journalist and novelist
Edwin Lefèvre (1871–1943) was an American journalist and author. He was born in Colón, in what is now Panama, and later lived in the United States, including Vermont. He wrote about finance and Wall Street. His books include Wall Street Stories (1901) and Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (1923).
More by Edwin Lefevre
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