Sceptre
Sceptre
Sceptre
Sceptre
A powerful, white-knuckle thriller, from the award-winning author of The Yellow Birds, shot through with treachery, trauma and the long tentacles of war.
'A cracking mystery'
GUARDIAN
'Entertaining, intelligent, and effortlessly readable'
SUNDAY TIMES
'Stunning'
NEW YORK TIMES
'A kickass mystery from a superb storyteller'
DAVID BALDACCI, author of The 6:20 Man
'Tense and enthralling'
DAILY MAIL
'Taut and enjoyable'
DAILY TELEGRAPH
It's an early morning on a beach in Virginia when Arman Bajalan discovers a dead body. Convinced that the murder is connected to his work as an interpreter in Iraq, he knows he's still not safe.
Seasoned detective Catherine Wheel and her fresh-off-the-beat partner have little to go on beyond a bus ticket in the man's pocket. But as victims mount around Arman, they find themselves in a deadly race, committed to unravelling the truth and keeping Arman alive - no matter the cost.
Kevin Powers' first novel, The Yellow Birds, won the Guardian First Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was a National Book Award Finalist. His poetry collection, Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize and Forward Prize. His second novel, A Shout in the Ruins, was published in 2018.
Born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a Michener Fellow in Poetry. He served in the US Army in 2004 and 2005 in Mosul and Tal Afar, Iraq.