My new international spy-thriller Octagon was published on 28th May 2026. It’s my ninth novel, but I was just as excited as for my debut, not least because it was the first time I’d had a hardback edition - and there was even a special version with sprayed edges! As always around publication time, there was a lot happening. Here’s a quick round-up (with links):
Goldsboro hosted a fantastic launch party and featured Octagon as its Crime Collective pick for May. It got endorsements from some brilliant writers in the genre, including David McCloskey, Charles Beaumont, I.S. Berry, M.W. Craven, Jack Carr, James Wolff, and Charles Cumming, plus reviews in The Times, Irish Independent, and Spybrary, and a mention in The Critic. I was interviewed about it for Aspects of Crime, the Team House podcast, and Confessions of a Book Collector, as well as writing a blog on one of its themes - nuclear terrorism - for Shotsmag. In a Kindle promotion, it became the #1 ranked espionage thriller on Amazon UK (just for a couple of days, but still).
I also managed to get out of the house to talk about it, giving it a quick pitch during a panel I moderated at Capital Crime on building a writing career, before discussing it with fellow spy writers James Wolff, Ava Glass, Tony Kent, and Vaseem Khan at Waterstone’s Putney while being ably grilled by Ayo Onatade. In September, I’ll be talking to Paul Burke about it at Bloody Scotland along with Kim Sherwood, David Goodman, and Paul Warner, and hopefully chatting to Spybrary about it soon, too.
Many thanks to everyone who has bought, read, and reviewed it so far - I really appreciated your support. And I’ve literally just finished the first draft of its sequel, slated for publication in 2027, so if you enjoyed Octagon, there’s more to come…