My enormous thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me to participate in the blog tour for Robert Peston’s latest book The Crash. I’m delighted to share my review today.

Published by Zaffre on 14th September 2023, The Crash is available for purchase here.

The Crash

London, 2007. It’s summer in the City: the economy is booming, profits are up and the stock market sits near record highs.

But journalist Gil Peck is a lone voice worrying it can’t last. Deep in the plumbing of the financial system, he has noticed strange things happening which could threaten the whole economy. But nobody wants to hear it: not the politicians taking credit for an end to boom and bust, not the bankers pocketing vast bonuses, not even Gil’s bosses at the BBC, who think it’s irrelevant.

When Gil gets a tip-off that a small northern bank has run out of money, everything changes. His report sparks the first run on a UK bank in 140 years. The next day, Marilyn Krol, a director of the Bank of England dies in an apparent suicide.

For Gil, it’s personal. Marilyn was his lover: was his scoop connected to her suicide? Or is there something more sinister in her death? Gil is determined to find out.

The more he investigates, the more he is drawn into the rotten heart of the financial system, where old school ties and secret Oxbridge societies lubricate vast and illegal conflicts of interest. The whole economy has been built on a house of cards, and Gil is threatening to bring it down.

When simply reporting the facts can make or break fortunes, Gil has to ask himself: is he crossing the line between journalist and participant? Are his own conflicts of interest making him reckless? And in a world ruled by greed where nothing and no-one is too big to fail, what price will he pay for uncovering the truth?

My Review of The Crash

The financial crash of 2007 is underway.

I confess that at the start of The Crash I wasn’t sure if I would enjoy the book because it is set so firmly in the duplicitous and corrupting worlds of banking, journalism, media and politics that all hold little interest other than frustration and anger for me. Equally, it took me a little while to settle into the writer’s style and I found the acronyms, brand name references and expletives occasionally distracting. There was a slight feeling of trying too hard to impress or shock the reader.

However, once I’d adjusted to the style and settled into what is a clever and entertaining plot in The Crash, those initial reservations dissipated. The continuous present tense gives a feeling of immediacy that is engaging. I think what works so well too is that recent real world events, historical and recent international banking crises, foreign interference in domestic UK affairs, and so on, all feel completely plausible and are woven through the action with complete authority by Robert Peston. The reader has the satisfaction of knowing that this is an author who knows what he’s writing about which makes it easier to slip into accepting and enjoying the narrative.

Aside from these large politicised elements, there are many more prosaic, and somehow more humane, themes that made the story attractive to me. Family and grief, personal relationships and love, trust, loyalty and friendship all lurk in the pages so that I think The Crash offers more to the casual reader than I first thought. 

Gil’s previous life is dripped into this story carefully so that the reader has a good idea of who he is and his narrative voice – almost an inner monologue – creates a sense of him incredibly vividly, making him hard to resist and I soon found myself caught up in Gil’s world. He’s a multi layered and flawed individual who feels realistic and human. His relationships with his mother and with Jess ameliorate his obsessive and frequently manic elements really well so that I became drawn to him.

There’s a wide range of other characters that blends real people known to the reader with fictional portraits very cleverly, so that at times it’s hard to know what’s fact and what is fiction. I found this a highly effective aspect of the text because it pulled me into the scenarios, making them intriguing and engaging. 

I began The Crash thinking I might not actually read it and ended it glad I had. The Crash is exciting, fast paced and engaging. It educates and entertains. It contains greater humanity than I had anticipated and Robert Peston has illustrated that he is a skilled and knowledgeable author who can hook even the most reluctant reader. He convinced me!

About Robert Peston

Robert James Kenneth Peston is an English journalist, presenter, and author. He is the political editor of ITV News and host of the weekly political discussion show Peston. From 2006 until 2014, he was the business editor of BBC News and its economics editor from 2014 to 2015.

For further information, follow Robert on Twitter @Peston and find him on Facebook and Instagram.

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