Journalism Thriller

Seattle, 1933. The city is in the grips of the Great Depression, Prohibition, and vice. Cutting his teeth on a small-time beat, hungry and ambitious young reporter William “Shoe” Shumacher gets a tip that could change his career. There’s been a murder at a social club on Profanity Hill—an underworld magnet for vice crimes only a privileged few can afford. The story is going to be front-page news, and Shoe is the first reporter on the scene.

London, the near future. GRM, a shadowy company running private prisons, has introduced a programme to alter prisoners’ memories, removing those that led to their criminal behaviour. When journalist Antonia Conti hears rumours that the technology has deadly side effects, she decides to investigate.

The constant threat of terrorism has left London under round-the-clock surveillance and in the tightening grip of privatised security firms. Journalist Antonia Conti suspects one such organisation—GRM—not only of being behind several women’s disappearances, but of financing the widespread violence it claims to fight. When a gang of hitmen use rampant state surveillance to track Antonia down, she narrowly escapes with her life. But then one of them turns up dead—covered in her DNA—and Antonia finds herself the prime suspect in his murder.

As Antonia Conti continues to make waves in London’s criminal underworld with her fearless investigative work, Rick Grainger, a star reporter for a rival newspaper, brings her a lead nobody else will touch—for good reason. The story reveals corruption at the highest level of government, and she quickly discovers that the people involved will do anything to bury it. And just when Antonia thinks she’s won her battle, Grainger disappears. Can she and her old friend DI Russell Chapman uncover the connection with her investigation and bring Grainger’s abductors to justice?