Whatever caused the recession, there’s one party on whom the trail has yet to go cold, and that’s the bankers. You couldn’t get much more topical, then, than The Banker’s Daughter. We begin in Beirut, where Hanna Mehdi and her father have sought refuge from furious investors after the collapse of his London-based bank. Hanna is not used to asking questions; all she’s been accustomed to is unlimited money and a first-rate education. But when she stumbles across a gruesome photograph that could implicate her father in something far more serious than dodgy lending, her whole understanding of his integrity is threatened.

Right from the off, Mian builds a financial landscape that’s uglier and more deceptive than even those closest to it might suspect. What comes across most clearly is that economics is not a set of intricate theories but a trade, and as such is riddled with deals and conmen. In Mian’s shrewdly observed novel, just as in the very real banking disasters filling the newspapers, greed is always the trump card.