The American banker-turned-novelist Paul Erdman entered the bestseller lists in 1976 with “The Crash of ‘79”, a political thriller in which a demented Iranian dictator secretly obtains nuclear weapons and launches a blitzkrieg to dominate the Middle East.

The megalomaniac ruler – a semi-fictionalised Shah Reza Pahlavi – cripples the world’s oil supply in the process and brings the international financial system to its knees.