One of Wall Street's trading legends is back in business this week after deciding not to retire, after all, at the ripe old age of 38.

Kenneth Morris, who has run international equities trading at Morgan Stanley, Drexel Burnham Lambert and Prudential-Bache in turn, has decided that Nomura, as the world's biggest securities house, is probably fair game. A "big hitter" known for his multi-million pound deals, legend has it that Morris once made $40 million overnight…

The above Times of London article -- hyperbole aside -- was written about Ken Morris in 1991. Less than two years later, he retired from Wall Street for good and returned to California where he now resides in Del Mar (where he has served on various community committees in addition to having coached 25 youth sports teams). Until 1998, he did financial consulting, his largest client being Lou Simpson, head of Warren Buffet's GEICO insurance investment subsidiary in Rancho Santa Fe. Ken has also advised companies on share repurchase and, in one instance, ousted the CEO of a corrupt company on behalf of a hedge fund investor (and received numerous anonymous threats in the process).

Ken's Wall Street career intersected with the famous and infamous. After a lengthy stint as an executive at Morgan Stanley, he worked at Drexel Burnham during the Crash of 1987, having suffered through the debacle that was the Milken junk bond scandal. He managed operations -- with hundreds of employees -- in New York, London, Tokyo, Toronto, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Amsterdam. In his duties as a manager and trader, he logged hundreds of thousands of miles travelling from market to market, on call, literally, twenty-four/seven.

Man in the Middle is populated with the sentiments of individuals Ken met in his Wall Street years, people who routinely bent or broke the rules. And these sentiments still exist today -- recently confirmed by Enron and others -- as much as ever. This "prescient" novel, written before recent headlines, is the story of one young man, Peter Neil, who finds himself thrust into the world of a high stakes hedge fund. For a time, he buys into the game of wealth creation with unbridled enthusiasm. It is only after he discovers that the deaths of several people - his mother included - were not what they seemed, does he realize that he needs to get out. Easier said than done, however. With the help of a diminutive SEC agent and an old flame, he devises a risky, yet inspired plot to extricate himself from those wishing to control him. In some ways, Ken has often reflected, Peter Neil's narrow escape mirrors his own.

A full time writer now, Man in the Middle is the first of Ken Morris' published novels. A second work, The Deadly Trade, is scheduled for publication -- also by Bancroft Press -- in March of 2004.

To e-mail Ken Morris, click here.