In the run-up to Interpol’s General Assembly, something is truly amiss. The world’s largest international police organisation is heaving with internal strife, petty rivalries, and treachery.

For the Secretary General, re-election is not enough. What he wants is a unanimous victory and he is willing to go to any lengths to secure it. It will not be easy. Not only are others, both inside and outside Interpol, trying to stop his re-election, but some hate him so much that they are plotting his ultimate humiliation. His enemies are legion; that much is clear. What is less clear is who exactly is plotting against him, and which of his many, many transgressions they want revenge for.

As the date of the General Assembly draws near, all parties redouble their efforts to get what they want. The result is chaos. The result is farce. The result is not Interpol’s finest hour.

Michael E. Rose is a Canadian author, journalist and broadcaster. He has worked for major media organisations around the world, including the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Maclean’s Magazine, Radio France International, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Reuters news agency in London. He is also the former Chief of Communications for Interpol at the agency’s global headquarters in Lyon, France.

His usual genre is spy thrillers, with the Frank Delaney series winning new readers year after year. The first thriller in that series, The Mazovia Legacy, won critical acclaim and was shortlisted in the prestigious Arthur Ellis Awards for Best First Novel. The second volume, The Burma Effect, drew similar attention. The third, The Tsunami File, was shortlisted in the Arthur Ellis Awards for Best Crime Novel of 2009.

Rose has travelled extensively to many of the world’s trouble spots including Nicaragua, Haiti, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Burma and East Timor. He has drawn from those experiences for the gripping stories and characters in his thrillers, and now for Interpol Confidential.

After spending a number of years in the UK and France, Rose now lives with his Australian wife and Burmese cat in Sydney. For more about him and his books, visit www.michaelrosemedia.com.

Rose writes with a deft hand, a twisted wit, and an insider’s knowledge of Interpol. A hilarious page-turner.

– Terry Fallis, award-winning satirist and author of The Best Laid Plans

Michael E. Rose’s hilarious satire takes us into a massive bureaucracy faithfully dedicated to combating crime and corruption, breaches of security, evil plotting and disloyalty – all in its own ranks. Departmental warfare and buried animals in the Interpol HQ garden are just the beginning. Add a paranoid, philandering Secretary-General who likes dressing up in silk kimonos, his wife who packs a mean Heckler & Koch, an executive of careerist back-stabbing multinationals, and bent cops who won’t share what they know with anyone, least of all other cops, and comedic stress leave is definitely in order!”

– Tony Maniaty, journalist and author of Shooting Balibo and Smyrna

A contemporary, character-driven farce that works wonderfully. The author of several previously-published crime thrillers, Rose skilfully draws on his own experience working within Interpol to fashion an entertaining mix of incompetence, scheming, and paranoia that will have readers gripping their sides with laughter. When delegates from around the world convene in Munich, ostensibly to re-elect the vain and ambitious Secretary General to another term, it all comes deliciously unglued in an entertaining farce that one suspects is closely rooted in fact. There are naïve junior technocrats struggling to comprehend what their boss requires (and who are unable to provide it), paranoid senior officials and their equally suspicious wives, and a CNN news crew eager to penetrate the walls of Interpol in search of scandal and incompetence, both of which abound. Once this tale hits the streets Rose should expect to find himself dropped from Interpol’s Christmas-card list.

– Jim Napier, reviewer at Deadly Diversions

Read about Interpol Confidential in the Ottawa Review of Books here.