The Overwhelming

"Then a single thought made my hair stand on end. Squires, who had just bought the building that had been blown up before my eyes, had switched our meeting this morning from the Cucumber to Freemasons Hall. My stomach turned. My mouth was dry. No one was going to convince me that this was just a coincidence. No one. How could such a thing be possible? If someone had suggested it to me, I would have laughed, but I knew it had happened and I wanted to know how and why and the blood on the pavement only yards from me made me certain that I would find out, somehow."

The story begins as thirtysomething journalist Nick Day is woken at 3.43am by foxes at play in his London garden, and ends several months later in the mountains of Kashmir, where he goes in search of Raj, the reluctant terrorist and ghost from Nick’s youth.

It should have been just another day at the office for Nick… until Raj, his online friend and chatroom jihadist, tells him another 9/11 is imminent. Nick's interview with billionaire tycoon John Squires, the new owner of London’s iconic Cucumber building, turns into a strange lunch at Freemasons Hall interrupted by a bomb exploding at nearby Buckingham Palace. Nick’s discoveries rapidly evolve into a dangerous investigation into murky property deals and foreign intelligence plots aimed at sparking war in the Middle East.

The novel explores themes of hidden links between terror groups, the intelligence agencies and high finance.

Erika Anderson of Canongate Books said of The Overwhelming: "The story is exciting, relevant and beautifully written..."