Refuge released

I am pleased to announce that Refuge, an 83,000-word thriller, is now available for download. It is set in the near future, twelve years on from a viral plague which has destroyed all but a few remnants of the human race.

This book was a long time in gestation. I distinctly remember having the first idea for it, while walking in a damp and gloomy February dusk not far from my former home. The road I was on passed under a tall, brick viaduct carrying the Metropolitan Railway line to London. On the left was a wooden bridge over the river; and then came the houses: bungalows and semi-detached, with their own front and rear gardens, imprinted with their owners’ tastes and illuminated in sickly orange by sodium light.

The phrase “reluctant hero” might have been coined for the protagonist, Suter. As for the villain, Bex, I confess that I was motivated a little by a publisher’s reader who complained that the character, in an earlier draft, was insufficiently evil.