Wednesday, March 05, 2008


MELTDOWN
Martin Baker Macmillan $38

Debut novelist Martin Baker was in Auckland a week or two back promoting his much praised MELTDOWN for publishers Macmillan. Sadly I couldn’t catch up with him but I have since had a chance to read the novel and a cracking good yarn it is too. If he can produce more of this quality then he is going to be a most welcome addition to the band of fine UK crime fiction writers.

MELTDOWN has been a long time in the making with the author telling us in his introduction that the manuscript took over a decade in research and writing.
The author qualified in law at Oxford before entering journalism. He currently writes for the Daily Telegraph and The Independent on Sunday. Most importantly for his new book he was the personal investment editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris for seven years. And also of interest in view of the book’s storyline is the fact that his wife, Nicola Horlick, is a very high profile financier in the City of London.

MELTDOWN is set largely in Paris where a young Englishman, the highly intelligent young graduate Samuel Spendlove, has been sent to work at Ropner Bank in an undercover role spying on Khan, a legendary trader at the bank.
With the recent major scandal in Paris involving a rogue trader the timing of MELTDOWN couldn’t have been better.

A riveting read, full of intrigue, sex, wheeling and dealing and financial skullduggery.
I hope it doesn’t take the author another ten years before we get another.
Thanks to Doris at Dymocks for recommending this title to me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your fatuous comments about Meltdown suggest that you haven't read it at all.

Beattie's Book Blog said...

Not so, I read it and enjoyed it and look forward to his next book.