Robert Peston:
The Crash

A follow-up to The Whistleblower, his excellent debut novel, The Crash sees the return of Gil Peck – a version of the young(ish) Robert Peston – and it is another gripping, intriguing story. London 2007. It is summer in the City: the economy is booming, profits are up and the stock market sits at near record highs. But Gil Peck is a lone voice worrying that it can’t last. Deep in the plumbing of the financial system, he has noticed strange things happening that could threaten the whole economy. But nobody wants to hear it. When Gil gets a tip-off that a small northern bank has run out of money, everything changes. Sound familiar? Robert’s wonderfully atmospheric thriller achieves that singular thing; fiction being as informative about how history happened as the bare facts. This is a brilliant, page-turning novel.