Reviews

  • The Economist, 31st January 2015:
    Red sky in the morning. A salutary tale of robbery and redress. BILL BROWDER was a happy man in 2003. He had the perfect job and was making himself rich. He bought underpriced shares in badly run Russian companies and chivvied the management into behaving better so the share price would go up. It worked. Between the depth of Russia’s financial crash in 1998 and the end of 2003, his investment fund had grown more than 12-fold. What could go wrong? Plenty, it turned out, including expropriation, beatings, intimidation and death. “Red Notice” is a sizzling account of Mr Browder’s rise, fall and metamorphosis from bombastic financier to renown... read full review
  • Fortune Magazine, February 2015:
    Written by Norman Pearlstine. Investor Bill Browder pulls back the curtain on Putin’s culture of corruption. The jacket note for Bill Browder’s Red Notice calls it “a real-life thriller about an American-born financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the people responsible in the Kremlin.” The description is accurate as far as it goes. Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a $230 million fraud perpetrated by Russian government officials against one of Browder’s companies in 2008. He was jailed after disclosing the fraud and subsequently killed while in pri... read full review
  • Booklist, 01 January 2015:
    Browder was a successful businessman, a pioneering investor in the emerging market that was Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Empire. In the 1990s, savvy investors were seeking out his hedge fund as a way to get in on astonishingly undervalued, newly privatized businesses in Russia. But along with privatization came the oligarchs, powerful Russians who took control of previously government-operated entities. After operating successfully for years, Browder ran afoul of the oligarchs and the government. He was suddenly persona non grata, expelled from Russia, leaving his company at the mercy of a tax scam—$230 million in fraud committed b... read full review
  • Kirkus Reviews - 15 November 2014:
    An American-born financier spins an almost unbelievable tale of the "poisoned" psychology afflicting business life in Vladimir Putin's Russia.By 2000, Browder, founder and CEO of the Hermitage Fund, helmed "the best performing emerging-markets fund in the world." Taking full advantage of the unprecedented investment opportunities available during post-Soviet Russia's transition from communism to capitalism, a gangland business atmosphere where oligarchs operated with impunity, Browder's firm became the biggest investor in Russia's stock market. He owed his rise in part to his willingness to fight back, to alert Western business contacts, to i... read full review
  • The Bookseller - 14 November 2014:
    Subtitled "How I Became Putin's No 1 Enemy," this is a jaw-dropping account of the Russian authorities' cover-up of the imprisonment, torture and murder of a brave young lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who testified against the Russian Interior Ministry regarding the conspiracy to steal $230m worth of taxes paid to the state by one of the world's most successful hedge funds. The fund's founder, who employed Magnitsky, tells of his transformation from hotshot financier to human rights activist, campaigning for justice for his friend. Walter Isaacson, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov and Georffrey Robertson QC are among those urging us all to read ... read full review
  • Publishers Weekly - 10 November 2014:
    In Russia the gangsters are running the government, according to this fascinating firsthand story of state criminality and persecution. Browder, founder of the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management (and grandson of American Communist Party leader Earl Browder), made his fortune investing in under-priced, privatized ex-Soviet companies and prodding their corrupt managers to divulge the true about their assets. The enmity of Russian oligarchs – and, eventually, Vladimir Putin – got him expelled from the country, whereupon his companies were seized by a group of police officials and used to steal $230 million from the Russian Treasury. When... read full review
  • "It reads like a non-fiction version of a Mario Puzo thriller. There’s a ruthless crime syndicate, a mafia boss – for Michael Corleone read Putin – and a growing tally of bodies."
    Luke Harding, award-winning foreign correspondent with the Guardian
  • “This book-within-a-book does for investing in Russia and the former Soviet Union what Liar’s Poker did for our understanding of Salomon Brothers, Wall Street, and the mortgage-backed securities business in the 1980s. Browder’s business saga meshes well with the story of corruption and murder in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, making Red Notice an early candidate for any list of the year’s best books.”
    Norman Pearlstine, magazine editor,  recipient of Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society
  • “We urge you to read the first 10 pages and then try to put it down. And we challenge you to finish it and not be incensed.”
    Examiner.com
  • "Reads like a classic thriller, with an everyman hero alone and in danger in a hostile foreign city … but it's all true, and it's a story that needs to be told."
    Lee Child, bestselling author of the Jack Reacher novels
  • "A fascinating and unexpected story - including the fact that my work played Cupid."
    Mitch Albom, author, Tuesdays With Morrie
  • "The story of Sergei Magnitsky's life and death is a shocking true-life thriller, and Bill Browder was the man to write it."
    Tom Stoppard, playwright
  • "In Red Notice, Bill Browder tells the harrowing and inspiring story of how his fight for justice in Russia made him an unlikely international human rights leader and Vladimir Putin's number-one enemy. It’s a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the culture of corruption and impunity in Putin's Russia today, and Browder’s heroic example of how to fight back."
    US Senator John McCain
  • "This book reads like a thriller, but it's a true, important, and inspiring real story. Bill Browder is an amazing moral crusader, and his book is a must-read for anyone who seeks to understand Russia, Putin, or the challenges of doing business in the world today."
    Walter Isaacson, author of Steve Jobs and The Innovators
  • "Browder's true story is a heart-in-your-throat page turner, and the only close-up look I know of what it's like to take on Putin. It is also a moving account of a man who found his calling, and ended up winning in the end."
    Bryan Burrough, co-author of Barbarians at the Gate and author of Public Enemies and The Big Rich
  • "This indispensable look at the brutal realities of the Putin regime is of even greater relevance thanks to Bill Browder’s unique expertise and personal experience inside the belly of the beast"
    Garry Kasparov, chess Grand Master, political activist and author of How Life Imitates Chess
  • "Bill Browder has become one of the most sincerely hated men in the Kremlin over the years - and that is something to be incredibly proud of…This book shows the difference that one person can make when they refuse to back down, as told by a fellow soldier in the battle to hold Putin to account."
    Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alekhina, members of Pussy Riot
  • "A fascinating, heart-stopping account of how to take on Putin - and win. It's exciting to read about Browder's roller-coaster ride to wealth in Russia, and then how compassion for Sergei Magnitsky, his murdered lawyer, inspires his memorable struggle against the venal apparatchiks of a corrupt state. This is the gripping - and absolutely true - story behind the Magnitsky Law, a signal advance in human rights."
    Geoffrey Robertson QC, author of Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle For Global Justice

Latest News

  • Russia Bans Bill Browder's New Book “Red Notice”, a Searing Exposé of Putin's Involvement in the Cover up of Sergei Magnitsky’s Murder By Red Notice Magnitsky Justice Campaign Press Release For Immediate Distribution Russia Bans Bill Browder's New Book “Red Notice”, a Searing Exposé of Putin's In... read more
  • Bill Browder: the Kremlin threatened to kill me By Red Notice by Luke Harding, The Guardian The former banker claims Vladimir Putin runs Russia like a crime syndicate. He should know: corrupt officials seized hi... read more

Red Notice

A real-life political thriller about an American born financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the people responsible in the Kremlin.

Red Notice will be published by Simon & Schuster in the US and by Random House in the UK, as well as publishers in France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Holland, Poland, Czech Republic, and Romania.

For more information about the book and links to foreign editions click here