【单选题】

As an investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions, Francois yon Hurter spent a lot of time in airport lounges, where he’d often set aside the latest deal calculations in favor Of a good mystery fiction reaD、So when he retired in 1998 after 25 years as a dealmaker, instead of joining legions of ex-bankers on extended vacations in exotic locales, yon Hurter committed himself and some hard-earned capital to his next business venture: He launched London-basedBitter Lemon Press, a publishing company Specializing in reprinting inEnglish mystery novels he’d grown to love.

These are not the usual hard-boiled RaymondChandler imitations found in some bookstores and at airport lounges. The works, written originally in German, French, Spanish and Italian, offer social criticism and a slice of culture with the who-done-it, according to Von Hurter, who likened some ofBitter Lemon’s titles to travel fiction. The books, translated intoEnglish for the first time, take readers to locales like MexicoCity, Munich and Havan
A、"I’d always go to bookstores in countries where I can read" the language, 58-year old yon Hurter told Reuters while in New York this month to promote the company. In fact, he admits to making sure that, whenever possible, his U.S. flights went through Minneapolis, which has one of his favorite second-hand bookstores.
Von Hurter, born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, and a graduate of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school, is not the only Wall Street veteran financingBitter Lemon Press. His brother Frederic yon Hurter, a former commodities trader atCargill, the Minneapolis food giant, and LaurenceColchester, a former economist atCitibank, are partners. Though the trio speaks French, Greek, German and Italian, they employ translators to bring the books to life inEnglish.
Francois von Hurter would not detail how much of the groups’s own money they put intoBitter Lemon.Bitter Lemon has published six books inBritain and has plans for five titles in the next six months or so as part of its launch in the United States. One such title, "Thumbprint", is a mystery written by Friedrich Glauser, who was born in Vienna in 1896 and has been referred to as a Swiss Simenon--a reference to the notedBelgian mystery writer known for his French detective Maigret. "Thumbprint", translated from German, has been one of theBitter Lemon’s most popular books, selling 5,000 copies. OtherBitter Lemon titles include Gunter Ohnemus’ "The Russian Passenger", the story of a cab driver who gets entangled with the Russian Mafia that has been translated from German, and "The Snowman" by Jorg Fauser, a German author born in 1944 who died in 1987. "Fauser was one of the romantic heroes of post-war German literature, a friend ofCharlesBukowski ... he is now being rediscovered," news magazineDer Spiegel noted in July, responding to a biography of Fauser published this summer.
As a banker for FirstBoston, known today asCredit Suisse FirstBoston, and Morgan Stanley, Francois von Hurter worked not only in New York but London and SaudiArabi
A、Among other deals, he had a hand in SeagramCo LtD、’s purchase of MC
A、InC、andCoca-ColaCo.’s purchase ofColumbia Pictures.And white the players are different, book publishing has some similarities to Wall Street’s merger business. Like a company put up for sale, a book needs a specific market and needs to have potential for growth. "You have to put together a business plan ... negotiate with suppliers like printers, a sales force and distributors. You need to apply the same marketing savvy to decide how to position the book," he saiD、
What is different about this latest venture, though, is that the hours spent in the office seem to race by much more rapidly. "In a way, the hardest part of the second career, is that it creates such enthusiasm that you tend never to turn off," he saiD、"The line between your private life and your ca