A stunning new SF thriller from the critically acclaimed author of The Execution Channel
A priest is dead. As Detective Inspector Adam Ferguson picks through the rubble of the demolished Edinburgh tenement, he discovers that the explosion wasn t an accident. When a bishop is assassinated soon afterwards, it becomes clear that a targeted campaign of killings is underway. No one has seen anything like this since the Faith Wars. In this enlightened age there's no persecution, but believers are a marginal and mistrusted minority. And now someone is killing them. But who?
At first, suspicion falls on atheists more militant than the secular authorities, but when the target list expands to include the godless, it becomes evident that Ferguson and his team need to cast their net wider. Although the solution lies in the brave new world of the future, its origin is couched in the rigid doctrines of the past. But with each question Ferguson answers the suspicion dawns that he may have stumbled upon a conspiracy to bring about disaster on, literally, a biblical scale...
MacLeod spins a yarn that moves at a fast pace, and which doesn't disappoint; exciting and intriguing, it keeps a consistent level of interest throughout its passage ... a satisfying read - SciFiNow
A twisting conspiracy tale shot through with MacLeod's gloriously mordant sense for the absurd - BBC Focus
Gripping and clever near-future thriller - Lisa Tuttle, The Times
A stunning indictment of fundamentalism of all kind s' Eric Brown, Guardian
Ken MacLeod was born on the Isle of Lewis and now lives in Gourock, Scotland. He has a postgraduate degree in biomechanics and worked for some years in IT. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer. He is the author of seventeen novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to The Corporation Wars (2018), and many articles and short stories. He has won three BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards.
He was a Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University, and Writer in Residence for the MA Creative Writing course at Edinburgh Napier University.
Ken MacLeod's blog is The Early Days of a Better Nation
http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com
His twitter feed is @amendlocke