The Wreckage by Michael Robotham

Usually when I write a review of a book I try to be a bit cheeky, a bit funny, a bit clever. I think a book report is not a very interesting way to talk about a piece of art. Sometimes the books are high art and sometimes kids drawings on the fridge, but art all the same. I like to spice things up with witty words and clever repartees.

This review will not be silly or smart. I'm not going to search for the right words or try to make you laugh. I approached Michael Robotham's new book The Wreckage with a reading experience in mind. I loved his last book Bleed for Me and wrote a little review of it a few months ago. It was a great adventure full of delicious suspense and an all around rollicking good mystery. The Wreckage started out the same way. The flawed but loveable and probably redeemable protagonist – an ex-detective in London, Vincent Ruiz, has an exchange with a small young thief which turns out to be the beginning of a roller coaster of a ride involving corruption at it's highest level. At the same time Luca Terracini, a Pulitzer prized winning journalist in Baghdad, falls upon a story which becomes an obsession and extremely dangerous. These two stories follow their own paths until they intersect later in the book and work together to uncover a world-effecting diabolical plot.

The story is a serious lesson about the financial state of the world and the people who manipulate money and lives without any thought for future consequences. It is a true story. Well, it's fiction, but it is based on truth. The world is a screwed up place in some respects and the arse-holes who have contributed to that state need to be found out and corrected, severely.

The twists and turns, the characters, the story line, the descriptions – all of it is top notch in this book. Robotham doesn't put a pen-stroke wrong here. He has captured the feel of the heat in Iraq and the drizzle in London. He has made me love some of his characters and, without over-dramatising, abjectly fear others. I was cheering for the grit and determination of some and hoping for the downfall of others.

Robotham has written a book, which is a suspense-filled, attention-grabbing, tightly written crime novel, AGAIN! I loved reading it. It kept me glued – another sleepless night (thanks Michael, at my age it is getting harder to catch up on missed sleep) - and totally enthralled. I didn't see any of it coming. I have said before that this isn't my favourite genre to read but that I would read anything Robotham writes. Well, that promise still holds after finishing this book. It is a winner with a message. Wake up and smell the money laundering. It is affecting us little folk too.

I so recommend this book – no jokes, no puns, no kidding around. This is one of those serious moments when I think the rest of the naive world should read this story and discover just one of the dirty little secrets of the upper echelon of society – bankers, investors, politicians and war-mongers. But I don't want to tell you too much more – I don't want to Wreck the ending. (Sorry – couldn't resist!)