Norb Vonnegut

My name is Norb Vonnegut. I write financial thrillers and blog about money for The Huffington Post, Switzer in Australia, and Acrimoney. Before turning to my career as an author, I worked in private wealth management as a stockbroker with Morgan Stanley, Paine Webber and other investment banks. It was there, knee deep in the business of finance, where I learned one absolute and irrefutable truth.

The people of Wall Street are characters. They're a ready mix of quirks and edgy humor. They speak in tongues, and their escapades make them the perfect fodder for irreverent fiction. Their behavior, so ordinary on Wall Street, can border on the bizarre anywhere else. You'll see what I mean inside the pages of Top Producer, The Gods of Greenwich, and my novels that follow.

So after two decades in the trenches, I traded money management to write thrillers about fictional stockbrokers, traders, and hedgies. My villains are a blend of pure fiction and people I heard about or read about through the years. You'll find themes like friendship and betrayal in my novels, lots of backstabbing as I describe financial scandals and gravitate toward stories about underdogs who prevail against overwhelming odds.

You don't need a background in finance to understand what makes my characters tick or the mistakes they make. There are no stock tips in my novels. But you might gain a few insights from a Wall Street color commentator—that's me—as you board a roller coaster ride of fiction that could be fact.

I graduated from Phillips Exeter in 1976, Harvard College in 1980, and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1986. These days, my family and I split our time between New York and Narragansett, Rhode Island. I'm an avid cyclist and volunteer with the American Foundation for the Blind as a member of the Board of Trustees.