The Wreckage by Michael Robotham

Published by Sphere, June 2011.

ISBN: 978-1-84744-221-5

Luca Terracini, is a British journalist currently living in Iraq outside the wire, and investigating a series of bank robberies – eighteen at last count, and the amount involved is millions of dollars – who is doing it, and how are they getting away with it? 

In London ex-cop Vincent Ruiz goes to the aid of a young woman in a bar, but helping her he ends up robbed, taken in by an elaborate scam.  He needs to get back something she and her boyfriend stole so he sets out to track them down.

These two completely isolated unrelated events in separate countries bring both parties into the path of foreign agents and people in high places, not all on the same side but all seeking to keep their secrets buried and to silence anyone who gets in their way.

Holly Knight has stolen something intensely personal from Ruiz but she also has something else, and even though she doesn’t know what she has, she is being hunted for it, and she will be killed as soon as they catch up with her. But who are they? These faceless covert people for whom human life is expendable.

This is top class thriller, that moves from war-torn Iraq to another war, that of the world of banking following the financial crisis. But as we are crashed into the horror of secrets, conspiracy and clandestine operations we also meet the ordinary people unwittingly caught up this maelstrom of terror.  This is one of the best books I have read this year.

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Lizzie Hayes