This is an exhausting story as it’s one hit after another.

I definitely felt like an outsider looking in on this story. Do you know anything about cryptocurrency? Me either. This is a little bit of a crash course by way of death.

Whirlwind romance and death, a jealous best friend, a cop that doesn’t know the whole story, and someone who’s keeping a very huge secret.

That’s all I’m going to tell you because I don’t want to spoil it.

Cold Wallet is a contemporary New Zealand thriller, set in the mysterious world of cryptocurrency - something I knew almost nothing about, and I have to confess that even with all the information presented here, I still don’t understand it. I requested this because I had very much enjoyed Death, Actually by this author, and while I found it heavier going because of the subject matter, it’s still an intelligent and well-written novel with an interesting heroine.

Jess Gordon has overcome a difficult adolescence to forge a successful medical career. After a whirlwind romance with wealthy Bitcoin trader Andrew, she is left distraught and bewildered when he dies suddenly on their honeymoon, leaving his company Vaultange entirely to her. His odious colleague and best friend Henry is jealous and resentful, but Jess needs his help - until access to all the money disappears, and Jess finds herself at the centre of a media frenzy, abandoned by her friends, betrayed by her colleagues, embroiled in a police investigation and the target of a vicious gangster. How can Jess, who never cared about the money, get her life back, when everyone thinks she must know where it went?

I do enjoy fiction set in NZ, and should read more of it, from the geographical, cultural and social details (I loved that she mentions Allbirds and provides a link in the glossary) to the political references eg the role the “501s” (Kiwis born here, who became criminals after moving to Australia as children and are being deported back here in large numbers) as a key part of the plot. You don’t have to know any of this to follow the story though, it’s explained clearly and non-judgementally.

The characters here are well developed - while Jess isn’t actually all that likeable, I did have sympathy for her plight. Part of the story is told from Henry’s POV, and you do start to feel sorry for him at times, until he does something awful again, and again. I did guess some of the twists, but not how it would turn out. I think all the currency info-dumping did slow the pace down too much, so I found myself easily distracted, but overall I did enjoy this: 3.5 rounded up for the clever ending. Thanks to NetGalley and Wonderful World for the ARC which allowed me to give an honest review. Cold Wallet is available now.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher Wonderful World for the electronic copy.

This story was intriguing in the beginning, set in New Zealand, Jess Gordon, a doctor, marries extremely wealthy Andrew Cullinane, the owner of Vaultange, a cryptocurrency exchange. His best friend and business associate Henry Turner has been with Andrew since its inception and appears jealous of the time Andrew spends with Jess.

For their honeymoon Andrew books an entire island resort where they are alone except for the staff. Andrew suffers from Inflammatory Bowel Disease which seemed controlled by medication. However, one night he becomes extremely ill, is helicoptered off the island but dies in hospital. Jess is left alone with Henry and Andrew's lawyer desperately trying to understand how Andrew's business works as everything has been left to her. There's money missing and some very bad clients intend to retrieve it.

Now, I'm sorry to say that, despite lengthy passages which presumably are there to try and enlighten the reader to exactly what a cryptocurrency is, how clients invest and receive returns, how vast sums of money are held in so-called "cold wallets" - I just couldn't get to grips with it - although Jess seems to get her head around it enough to produce a twisty story end.

That's just my humble opinion - if you're into cryptocurrencies and the dealings around them, you'd probably really enjoy it; for me, if the storyline had been transposed into the normal banking system, even secret Swiss accounts and passcodes, it would have made more sense.