What would you do if you discovered a man’s body in a black plastic bag?
The excesses of London’s banking world provide the backdrop for crime novel Micah Seven Five, which is set just after the Lloyd’s insurance crash in the late 1990s.
The book centres on an unidentified body, which is found dumped outside a charity shop. The find takes Det Insp Jack Munday and his colleagues on a trail that leads them into the world of London’s highly paid bankers, where drugs, sex, risk-taking and flamboyant living come easily.
But it also leads him back over 20 years to a group of now powerful and respected individuals who, when they were a close-knit group of friends at university, led a hedonistic lifestyle which could now prove ruinous for any or all of them.
Author Howard Robinson, who admits to closely observing fellow passengers on the London Underground, as he creates his characters says: “I try to write books that I would want to read; a story that has ordinary characters with whom any of us can identify, but are brought together through an extraordinary situation.
“What interested me was the impact of an event like the Lloyd’s crash had on somebody’s life. I had read about the disparity between those who lost everything and those who didn’t, and I built the story around a guy who loses everything he has as a result.”
Micah Seven Five is published by independent publishers Inspired Quill.