The Blood Banker by David Prever
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Interesting premise for a novel – a French banker apparently commits suicide by jumping in front of a tube train, leaving his family with huge debts. Shortly afterwards another notable figure, a proponent of internet censorship, hangs himself while on holiday. However, we the reader know these aren’t suicides but murders carried out by a shady figure known only as The Cleaner.
Investigative journalist Danny Lightfoot stumbles upon the story and decides to investigate, using his blog to update his findings. The villain of the piece becomes known very early on, with the novel’s purpose being to unravel the reasons for the murders.
The first few chapters really pulled me in; they were fast paced and exciting and left me wanting to know more. However, the book then slowed to snail’s pace following Danny’s arrest on charges of breaching the Official Secrets Act, and I found the middle section a bit of a plod. Fortunately the pace picks up again towards the end.
Overall this was a good story BUT the book is full of typos and grammatical errors. In the acknowledgments the author thanks his editor but I think I’d be asking for a refund! There are entire random words, presumably left behind from earlier edits, that are really distracting, and near the end there’s a line where Danny uses his phone as a torch and “shined the phone on the wall” …… aaargh how on EARTH did that get through the editing process??!!
