sleepy
Number of pages: 345
This was a book that I booked up cheap at a secondhand book sale. Set in London's famous Square Mile, it opens with the director of a banking firm's London branch being found dead in his room, strangled with his own tie.
The book then introduces the central character, one of the bank's employees, Anthony Carlton, who for reasons that I wasn't entirely clear about, does the job of the police by investigating the man's death, his investigation taking him to other branches of his company around the world, as he gradually discovers a web of corruption, mostly revolving around a large property fund that the bank has launched.
I was expecting there to be further deaths, and I wasn't wrong, although the second death didn't come until somewhere around the middle of the book. Towards the end, Anthony also has two attempts made on his own life. I didn't think this was a brilliant book, being a bit too long-winded at times, but it was readable. It did make its main character somewhat three-dimensional by going into depth about his romantic life, and it did introduce a few plot twists near the end where a few things were made to be not quite what they first appeared to be, but one of the final chapters summed up events through a series of fictional newspaper articles, which I didn't find to be a great narrative device.
Overall, this book is worth reading, though I'm not sure if I would read it again.
Next book: Calm (Tim Parks)
