Whodunit with economic and political background

Manuel Borda: The Wide Road to Destruction – The Downfall of the Privileged, Strategic Book Group, 2011, 391 pp.

If you want a good read, a whodunit that races breathtakingly over several continents and many years, then this is it, written by a Maltese economist, ex-politician and ex-Speaker of the Maltese Parliament.

It is a morality tale about a reversal of personal fortune through a life of vice. You can think of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray. There you can follow a man’s descent into evil by scrutinising a painted portrait, which writhes and withers vicariously while the original retains a surface cool.

Borda’s tale of moral decomposition rings no new bells as such. What is the fall of Man in Genesis but such a thing? There are many such stories in the Old Testament and one well-known parable about a prodigal son in the New.

Shakespeare provides several examples, the most famous of which perhaps being Macbeth who cannot go back on his crimes for fear of so many bloody steps to retrace.

Borda depicts this descent of a man against a background of economical wisdom. In a previous book he had outlined an ascent through honest business dealings. In this second book, the wheel turns the other way, to undo by vice what virtue has won.

As a practising Christian economist himself, Borda takes up the story of a successful businessman who has made it good by being inspired by the Gospel all along, and who now leaves the road of success for that of destruction.

You could read it for its knowledgeable tour of emerging nations or climbing economies: the Falkland Islands, Barbados, Botswana, Burma, Egypt, and Zimbabwe. Borda makes use of his vast professorial expertise and travels, to discuss one upcoming country after another.

In the course of his travels, the protagonist, who has lost a wife through the botched murder attempts of jealous ex- business partners, now gets involved with a Zimbabwean girl, whom he ultimately marries. The man, who has turned to sex, drugs and drink little knows that the girl brings him her own parcel of woe.

The writing is staid but not stiff or difficult. It flows easily over large spaces and time intervals. It contains no ornate descriptions and rarely stops to consider breaking day or setting sun. Though the protagonist has a roving eye, scenes of seduction are swift and purposeful.

The book sells at the Agenda Bookshops.