From murder mysteries in the windswept landscapes of Iceland, to tales of chilling greed in the world of banking, to knife-edge dramas involving incidents that brought the world to the very brink of nuclear catastrophe, Michael Ridpath is among Britain’s most versatile best-selling novelists. His first, Free to Trade, published in 1995, was a financial thriller drawing on his experience working in bond trading and private equity. “I had come across some pretty dodgy characters,” he says. “There were good guys, there were bad guys, and there were plenty of shades of grey in the middle; the shades of grey interested me.” Free to Trade became an immediate bestseller and, from there, Michael wrote seven more thrillers set in the worlds of business and finance.