Wall Street thriller

Well, newsman Paddy Hirsch has got some news for you.

Sorry folks, it’s been like that pretty much forever.

Shields of regulation might be thrust up to great fanfare during or just after a fiscal crisis, but many of these protections become evaded or torn to bits in an all-too predictable lead-up to the next crisis.

Greed’s destructive, gravitational suck is rendered vivid in Hirsch’s robust first novel, “The Devil’s Half Mile” (Forge Hardcover, Macmillan Audio), which explores the true lows of high finance when Wall Street emerged as a business mecca in the late 18th century.

As Hirsch’s story opens, a newly minted Irish lawyer — the aptly named Justice Flanagan — stands on the deck of a ship moored on the East River. In the space of two pages, Flanagan watches a brawl start to break out between black and white stevedore gangs. But that fight is halted by discovery and retrieval of the floating body of a black teenage prostitute.

It leads to a trail of clues twisting through fiscal schemes and bouts of mayhem to end in a cluster of daunting revelations: corruption in law enforcement (such as it is); a plan to sell shares in a brothel that features underage women of color; and the reason why the murder of Flanagan’s father had been faked as a suicide some eight years before.

Hirsch’s tale might be set in 1799, but it is told with a briskness and a brio that makes it very akin to a modern thriller. The author has an ear for both early Wall Street terminology and Irish street slang, as well as a fine gift for crafting authentic action scenes.

Like his fictional investigator, “Justy” Flanagan, Mr. Hirsch boasts a complex past that just might explain his mix of abilities. Before he took on his current day job, as supervising editor for “The Indicator” show on NPR’s “Planet Money,” and even before he became a reporter employed by financial journals, he spent a decade enlisted in the Royal Marines, seeing action in the Mideast during Desert Storm.

“My military service taught me that you have to keep your eyes wide open in any career where you happen to find yourself,” Hirsch said. “And try to grasp the true objectives of your employer.

“For my next job, I thought a reporter’s life might be fun. I liked business as a topic. Plus, it was an easy journalism beat to enter without a degree. Not many people were fighting to study it! My teachers became the reporters and editors working in that field. After some years, I came to see that amazing things happening in geopolitics actually had a fiscal basis. That realization landed rather hard.”

First in print, then later in radio, Hirsch blazed a path as an interpreter between financiers and the general public. “The Devil’s Half Mile,” he said, began as a non-fiction history of Wall Street. Then he realized that a novel might make a far better vehicle to tell this tale.

“In fiction, you can use both analogies and composite characters to communicate a deeper truth, more creatively and more quickly,” Hirsch said.

For the time being, Hirsch, now a trim and lanky 50, says he’ll pursue both communication strategies: crafting commentary for NPR financial shows, and writing more novels that seek to bring fiscal history to life. He’s already completed a sequel to “Half Mile,” featuring his hero Justy Flanagan, plus other characters who managed to survive Hirsch’s gnarly first plot.

At his readings and appearances — like the one coming up on Oct. 4 at Books Inc. in Palo Alto — Hirsch will try to answer questions about both his artistic writing and his fiscal journalism. When he looks at the current scene in the United States, he said that regulations added since 2008, including capital requirements for banks, remain good and effective. But what worries him are our many “shadow banks,” — like hedge funds, insurance companies and brokers. These institutions, largely unregulated, now hold more than half of the current debt in the United States.

Hirsch said, “I’m an observer, not an advisor.” Still, he’s willing to offer a tip to modern investors. “Always seek transparency,” Hirsch says. “If you don’t understand it, don’t buy it. Cram your money into a black box if you choose, but don’t be surprised when it vanishes.”

If you want to go: Paddy Hirsch, author of “The Devil’s Half Mile,” appears at Books Inc. in Palo Alto 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4. The store is at 855 El Camino Real, No. 74. (650) 321-0600.