Arthur Cotton is losing his once sharp mind to dementia. But when a body washes up on Brighton beach, fragments of his dangerous past begin to surface. Fifty years ago, he kept the books – and the secrets – of Brighton’s criminal underworld. Retirement came with one rule, that he keep his mouth shut.
Susan Cotton thought she knew her father. She was wrong. Now, old enemies are paying attention to Arthur.
To protect her Dad, Susan must turn detective and discover a Brighton she barely recognises. A city of gangsters, hidden violence and explosive lies, with every revelation pulling her family closer to danger.
The William Carver Series
A Dying Breed
Kabul
William Carver, a veteran but unpredictable BBC hack, is thrown into the unknown when a bomb goes off killing a local official. Warned off the story from every direction, Carver won’t give in until he finds the truth.
Patrick, a young producer, is sent out on his first foreign assignment to control the wayward Carver, but as the story unravels it looks like the real story lies between the shadowy corridors of the BBC, the perilous streets of Kabul and the dark chambers of Whitehall.
Set in a shadowy le Carré-esque world, A Dying Breed is a gripping novel about journalism in a time of war, about the struggle to tell the stories that need to be told – even if it is much easier not to.
Read about the book on The Guardian.
A Single Source
Cairo
Veteran reporter William Carver returns in this brilliant thriller set against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, from the author of the highly-acclaimed A Dying Breed.
Veteran BBC reporter William Carver is in Cairo, bang in the middle of the Arab Spring. ‘The only story in the world’ according to his editor. But it isn’t. There’s another story, more significant and potentially more dangerous, and if no one else is willing to tell it, then Carver will – whatever the consequences.
A Single Source tells two stories, which over a few tumultuous months come together to prove inextricably linked. There are the dramatic, world-changing events as protests spread across North Africa and the Middle East, led by a new generation of tech-savvy youngsters challenging the corrupt old order. And then there are two Eritrean brothers, desperate enough to risk everything to make their way across the continent to a better life in Europe.
The world is watching, but its attention span is increasingly short. Carver knows the story is a complex one and, in the age of Facebook, Twitter and rolling news, difficult stories are getting harder to tell.
A Cursed Place
Chile, Hong Kong, Silicon Valley
The tech company Public Square believes in ‘doing well by doing good’. It’s built a multi-billion dollar business on this philosophy and by getting to know what people want. They know a lot. But who else can access all that information and what are they planning to do with it?
Reporter William Carver is an analogue man in a digital world. He isn’t the most tech-savvy reporter, he’s definitely old school, but he needs to learn fast – the people he cares most about are in harm’s way.
From the Chilean mines where they dig for raw materials that enable the tech revolution, to the streets of Hong Kong where anti-government protesters are fighting against the Chinese State, to the shiny research laboratories of Silicon Valley where personal data is being mined everyday – A Cursed Place is a gripping thriller set against the global forces that shape our times.
The Burning Time
Sydney, London, New York, Seville
Australian inventor and geoengineer Clive Winner is the genius who brought the Great Barrier Reef back from the brink, yet his ambition goes well beyond that. He wants to save the planet.
For the all-powerful fossil fuel industry, Winner is their ‘get out of jail free card’. If he can engineer a solution to climate change, business can continue as usual.
When old-school journalist William Carver is tipped off by a trusted Whitehall source that climate scientists have begun to go missing in suspicious circumstances, his gut instinct tells him to follow the story. It rapidly becomes clear that scientists, green campaigners and well-intentioned politicians are in the firing line; William Carver and his colleagues must move fast to find out who is behind the disappearances. They know the journalist’s job is to speak truth to power – but first you must uncover that truth and this time it’s buried deeper than ever.
Racing between Sydney, New York, Seville and London, The Burning Time is an intelligent, timely and fast-paced thriller for the 21st century.