Benjamin Weaver is an outsider in 18th-century London: a Jew among Christians; a ruffian among aristocrats; a retired pugilist who, hired by London's gentry, travels through the criminal underworld in pursuit of debtors and thieves.

In A Conspiracy of Paper, Weaver must investigate a crime of the most personal sort, involving the mysterious death of his estranged Father, a notorious stock-jobber. To find the answers, Weaver is drawn into the labyrinthine world of British finance, where the South Sea Company is among the first institutions to issue certificates of stock, an innovation that sets off a frenzy of speculation among investors and wariness among directors of the Bank of England.

Written with scholarly attention to the detail of the period, A Conspiracy of Paper is one of the wittiest and most suspenseful historical novels in recent memory, as well as a perceptive and beguiling depiction of the origins of today's financial markets.