Outback

A powerful debut novel that continues the legacy of ‘Master of the Genre’ Desmond Bagley with a thriller set in Australia, also appealing to a new generation of readers of who adore Jane Harper and Chris Hammer.

The Sequel to Desmond Bagley’s DOMINO ISLAND

Insurance investigator Bill Kemp had never wanted to trek deep into Australia’s remote interior. But when his clients Sophie and Adam Church inherit an abandoned opal mine, triggering some explosive long-lost secrets, they – and Kemp – find themselves facing an unknown enemy even more deadly than the vast, forbidding wilderness of the Outback…

The Desmond Bagley centenary novel honours the legacy of the bestselling thriller writer with a new adventure featuring Bill Kemp, described by Jeffrey Deaver as ‘part James Bond, part Philip Marlowe, and all hero’. Writer Michael Davies, who completed the first Kemp novel Domino Island for publication nearly 40 years after the author’s death, now weaves an original tale of danger and death under the blistering Australian sun.

Reviews

Praise for the previous book, Domino Island:

‘What a wonderful book! And a protagonist for all time, Bill Kemp—part James Bond, part Philip Marlowe, and all hero. A brilliant and timeless novel’
JEFFERY DEAVER

‘A vintage Bagley scenario of siege, jeopardy and explosive action’
MIKE RIPLEY

‘Like a dream come true – an undiscovered Desmond Bagley novel … and it’s a great one!’
LEE CHILD

About the author

Michael Davies began his career as a newspaper journalist and editor and a professional theatre critic. Since moving into fiction, his writing has appeared on stage, screen, radio, the printed page and online. His debut play won a national competition, and subsequent work includes Tess – The Musical, an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles. He is a lifelong Desmond Bagley fan, and in 2019 reworked one of Bagley’s abandoned drafts into the highly acclaimed novel Domino Island.
Desmond Bagley was a multi-million-copy selling author of 16 adventure thrillers. Moving to South Africa after WW2, his transition from unskilled printer’s apprentice, aircraft engineer, mine worker, photographer and radio scriptwriter to one of the world’s most respected thriller writers is legendary, described by The Times as a ‘craftsmanlike thriller novelist’. Returning to the UK in the 1960s, he lived with his wife Joan in Devon and then Guernsey.