15 Financial Thrillers Perfect for the Beach

BOSTON (TheStreet) -- It can be difficult for fiction to get scarier than truth when the topic is the world of finance.

Though less prominent and popular than legal mysteries, financial thrillers have their fans. With plotlines echoing real-life scandals, downfalls and crimes lurking along Wall Street, they also get insider critics who can be hard to please.

H.T. Narea, after two decades as an investment banker, has written a financial thriller that is among recently released beach reads with financial themes.

There are still plenty out there to enjoy during a week on the beach or a commute into the city. But before our list of the greatest and latest, consider what goes into the financial thriller.

Novelist Ken Morris draws upon his experiences on Wall Street.

Man in The Middle (Bancroft Press, 2003) tells of the murder and mayhem that surrounds an unscrupulous hedge fund with global impact. The Deadly Trade (Bancroft Press, 2004) was actually written first, but delayed from hitting shelves for more than a year because its plotline -- our protagonist, while analyzing biotech stocks for a small investment banking house, uncovers a terrorist plot involving bio-weapons and anthrax -- hit too close to home after 9/11 and the subsequent real-life anthrax scare.

"In fact it had mentioned the whole Iraq situation before we invaded and bio-warfare tests in Iraqi prisons," Morris says. "It looks as though it was stealing from the headlines, as opposed to anticipating the headlines. We delayed it for well over a year to let that die down."

Morris started his career as a stock market trader for Morgan Stanley(MS). At 31 he was promoted to head of international sales and trading. Over time, his influence in international markets led the Times of London in 1991 to refer to him as "one of Wall Street's trading legends."

In 1994, fed up with the corruption he had seen over the years, Morris left the world of investment banking to focus on life as a writer and commentator.

Morris -- who is most recently co-author (with Jeanne Devon) of the New York Times best-seller Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years (Howard Books, 2011), by former Palin insider Frank Bailey -- shared with TheStreet some of the elements he thinks a good financial thriller should have: