Mikkel Krause Frantzen, "The Birth of the Financial Thriller" (Edinburgh University Press, 2025)

In the latest episode of Unlocking Academia, host Tarin Ahmed is joined by historian and cultural critic Mikkel Frantzen to explore his new book The Birth of a Financial Thriller: Making a Killing in the 1970s (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Together they explore how the financial thriller genre emerged in the tumultuous economic climate of the 1970s and why its narrative strategies still shape how we imagine markets, risk and the drama of capital today. Frantzen guides us through the historical forces that gave rise to the genre, from the breakdown of Bretton Woods and oil crises to the rise of speculative finance and the globalisation of markets. Along the way, he shows how early works such as Paul Erdman’s The Billion Dollar Sure Thing set the template for novels where financial systems themselves become sites of mystery and suspense.  Drawing on literary analysis, economic history and cultural critique, the conversation unpacks key moments and texts that defined the genre, and considers how thrillers about markets both reflect and influence broader cultural understandings of power, uncertainty and crisis. Listeners will come away with a deeper appreciation of how fiction and finance have been entwined since the late twentieth century, and why the financial thriller continues to resonate in an era of ongoing economic upheaval.They explore how the financial thriller genre emerged in the tumultuous economic climate of the 1970s and why its narrative strategies still shape how we imagine markets, risk and the drama of capital today.