Cristina Alger Writes "The Darlings," on Ethics, and Fortune Brought Low THE ladies who pre-lunch at the Regency Hotel had no idea there was a spy in their midst. Cristina Alger always fits incontestably into Park Avenue's epicenter of corporate power breakfasts, the evening cocktail hours for young socialites in training. She likes to go there because "it's just up from my apartment," she said. Check the Goyard schlepping bag, the Cartier watch and Hermès bracelets wrapping her wrist. There's nothing to reveal that Ms. Alger, 31, has now stepped outside the hush-hush circle of her upbringing - Chapin, white-gown debut, four social years at Harvard - to drop a dime on the whole shebang. Her first novel, "The Darlings," comes out Monday. It's about one of those bright and shining New York families (the Darlings) who have it all. Until they don't. An estimable fortune is brought low, and along with it the racquet club morale and ethical code by which Carter Darling, the founding billionaire of a seemingly unassailable hedge fund, has led his life and steered his family: his lovely, frosty wife; his two unevenly accomplished daughters, and the highly presentable young men - one smarter and not to the WASP manner born - who have married them. The ostensible tripwire of the disaster is the discovery that a trusted firm member has been running a far-reaching Ponzi scheme. "The Madoff situation was just starting to unfold as I began the book," Ms. Alger said, "but he wasn't the only Ponzi schemer out there. I had read and heard about plenty of them. What interested me more was what makes other characters turn a blind eye, and what happens as a result. She took an analyst job at Goldman Sachs straight out of college, then, one New York University law degree later, became a rising corporate attorney at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr. But the financial crash of 2008 upended the moneyed world around her, she said. As she watched the Wall Street crackup, she decided "I wanted to write about it." Where did she get the nerve? Tamped down inside the young professional she had become was the writer she had hoped she might be until three days into her senior year: Sept. Her father, David Alger, the well-known chief executive of the mutual fund giant Fred Alger Management, had his offices on the 93rd floor of the north tower at the World Trade Center. Ms. Alger learned of her father's death "because I was watching the news on television." An only child, losing her father "changed my life in more ways than I can articulate," she said. "I wasn't thinking terribly clearly," when she made her about-face into investment banking. I wanted a job close to my family and that paid enough so my mom wouldn't worry about me. "When a parent dies, particularly one who's prominent," said Ms. Alger's close Harvard friend, Christina Lewis, daughter of the late Reginald Lewis, "that's a lot of responsibility. You have to be strong and self-aware. Cristina is. In her book, 9/11 is barely mentioned, yet, Ms. Alger writes, no one forgets "when the planes hit the Trade Towers and all was lost in New York." "It was an end of innocence," she said. Ms. Alger and her father were not only very close (both fanatical athletes, both crazy about writing and books), she also believes her parents provided her with a moral compass, stressing that they had been happiest when they were young and struggling, that their good fortune was owed to education and hard work. And they were strict, her mother a rigid stickler for good manners and proper behavior. They stayed vigilant, Ms. Alger believes, as they eyed the circles she was moving in. In the novel, Merrill, the older Darling daughter, reflects that "Manhattan children were like armadillos...They had to be. Manhattan was a Darwinian environment...Merrill would see schoolchildren on Park Avenue, golden-haired cherubim in pinafores and Peter Pan collars, and she would think: These are the offspring of killers. Yet anyone who reads the book and sees themselves mirrored in the particular tuck of Nantucket reds or a silly quote about Palm Beach "would have to be a narcissist," Ms. Alger said. The exception is a minor character in this novel who will be a major player in her next one. Any resemblance between the overzealous (in the Darlings" eyes) Wall Street watchdog Bill Robertson and Client No. 9 is totally on purpose, Ms. Alger said. I like the idea of a political figure with great promise, yet personal feelings can bring down a professional life. The comparisons to Tom Wolfe that are starting to come her way, Ms. Alger said, just make her laugh. "Alexandra Wolfe was one of my best friends at Chapin," she said. "I practically grew up in the Wolfes" apartment." Her parents had a downstairs neighbor who was also kind to the embarrassed eighth-grader they sent over to show off her first Chapin literary prize. Joan Didion "served me tea, and told me something I've never forgotten," Ms. Alger said, "that you have to have something to write about before you learn how to write about it." Her mother has not remarried. "She's old-fashioned that way," Ms. Alger said. She and Joan check in on each other. She has dedicated "The Darlings" to her mother, an indication of how far their relationship has come not just since her father died but since her father-centered adolescence. She also has a fiancé in place - a onetime friend from Goldman, now at a private equity firm - and he didn't grow up in New York. The other day she picked out a wedding dress her mother actually loves almost as much as the plans for Ms. Alger's wedding at the Knickerbocker Club in May. "I like to think that people have learned from 2008," she said. There was so much hubris, so much not being kept in check. But it'll take years to see if it's changed.