The year is 2035. Quebec is a sovereign country. The government has chosen to make it a tax haven to stimulate its economy. It is part of an alliance of newly sovereign states, such as Catalonia and Scotland, which have chosen the same path.
Except that the stratagem does not work as well as expected and Quebec Prime Minister Éloi Laliberté proposes a radical means to restore balance to public finances.
This plan terrifies Cécile Larrivee, chief of staff of the Minister of Finance. She decides to betray the Prime Minister, an old friend, and to sound an alert on the international scene. To do this, she must hide her game and flee Quebec.
It is a renowned tax specialist, Brigitte Alepin, who concocted this political fiction thriller. The Quebecer, trained at Harvard, has written several essays on taxation, including These rich people who don’t pay taxes. The alert is her first work of fiction and clearly, she had fun letting her imagination run wild. To appreciate the novel, you obviously have to accept certain premises: a sovereign Quebec, an almost messianic prime minister.
The suspense is well established, we actually wonder throughout the novel if Cécile will manage to sound the alert. The characters are relatively complex: should we trust friends? Or be wary of it? Can we trust billionaires when they say they have good intentions? The plot gets a little carried away towards the end, but that’s the characteristic of this kind of literature: what would a thriller be without a good chase?
It remains that The alert is more entertaining than any book on international taxation. That’s already taken.
The alert
Druid
256 pages