THE TONTINE

About the Book

A tontine is an investment scheme named after Lorenzo di Tonti, a neapolitan banker, who invented it in France in 1653. The basic concept is simple. All funds are invested and each member receives dividends. As each investor dies, his shares are kept in the tontine until only one survivor is left and he collects all the shares. Once very popular it is now banned due to the fact that the members began to kill one another in order to receive all the shares. Barry Howard an exporter of fine shoes from Spain and his partners, Kate Chimago, a Cuban expatriate, now a maker of super elegant sandals in China and Monty Oliver, who years ago had scraped the Mississippi mud of his tenured black ass and was now making millions with his line of urban clothing in Florence, Italy-- formed a guild to protect their product from poachers that stole their styles and sold them cheaper Their desires to control all the shares mistakenly got them tied to an unbreakable tontine. When all the friendly shareholders began to disappear, fear began to tear into the confidence of the successful Guild.

About the Author

After having attended 4 different colleges,one of which was Christ College at Oxford University without having a degree, I finally realized, at the age of 23 there would be no M.D. attached to the name of Larry Wagger. Compounding my age of discontent after getting out of a military hospital Fort Dix from the war to end wars, I headed to Hollywood. I stopped by Savannah, Ga to pay my respects to a family that gave comfort to me while I helped form the Eighth Air Force.but I was short-stopped by this four foot eleven inch angel with a halo that included a job at a shoe store where I must have been infected with a shoe disease caused by being punctured in the ass by a high heel. Whatever! It took! From traveling four years on the road as a shoe salesman, rising to sales manager of the company, buying a small shoe factory in Spain to making fifteen hundred pairs of shoes a day to traveling nearly four million miles all over the world making and selling shoes, and here I am. I hope you like the book..