A Question of Trust by Jonathan Pinnock

Life always seems unnecessarily complicated round Tom Winscombe. Just when he thought things were settled, his bizarre luck strikes again and everything comes unraveled. His girlfriend Dorothy has gone missing, and her company's offices have been cleared out; all the PCs stolen, all the money gone.

Now Tom is having to share a bed-sit with Dorothy's business partner, Ali (not Tom's biggest fan). While she desperately tries to keep their company going, Tom's priority is to find out what's happened to Dorothy. Is it feasible she's run off with the money and equipment? Could someone else have stolen it and be holding Dorothy hostage? 

Meanwhile, Tom's father has got tangled up in some cryptocurrency scam, an old presumed-dead acquaintance has re-surfaced, and another definitely-dead acquaintance is sending him LinkdIn messages. Life's certainly not dull around Tom!

So off he goes on another escapade; an innocent caught up in a world of criminal activities and dodgy dealings, with little but his luck to help him. This time he gets mixed up with questionable city types, an off shore independent country in the Bristol Channel, crashing a stag weekend, an escaped python and an unusual use of the Fibonacci sequence - with plenty of dangerous James Bond style stunts (though Bond would probably have pulled them off with a bit more grace and panache). It's hectic, frequently dangerous, sometimes darkly humorous, sometimes laugh out loud slapstick.

As with Tom's previous mis-adventure The Truth about Archie and Pye, it's not a serious, grim Nordic Noir thriller, more 'James Bond meets Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright', or Adam West's Batman without the cape. It could all turn deadly, but it's undeniably fun.




Maryom's review - 5 stars
Publisher - Farrago
Genre - adult thriller