His first novel in 12 years, The Punished is available for pre-order on Amazon.

Tyneham, England, 1943, three years after Dunkirk. Commanding Officer Hulford-Prandy forces rebel Jack to handle BLISS, a deadly chemical weapon. Jack falls in love with radar operator Gin, but so does Hulford-Prandy who inveigles her into the Special Operations Executive, sending her to destroy a munitions factory in France. She’s captured and disappears.

Forty years later. City high-flyer Alexis meets three veiled women at her mother’s funeral who want to know what happened to her mother, Gin, during the war. Alexis knows nothing, but when she’s scattering Gin’s ashes in the ghost village of Tyneham, as requested by Gin, she meets a loner, Aidan, who claims BLISS is still there.

As Alexis and Aidan get closer to the truth, they find their lives in danger. When he enters the live firing range where BLISS is located, his preoccupation becomes deadly.

The Punished is a journey in four parts. Jack’s conversion from rebellious eighteen-year-old to peace campaigner; his son Aidan’s search for the truth; Gin’s journey from naive but plucky eighteen-year-old to secret war hero, risking her life many times over with a grenade in her pocket; and her daughter Alexis’s transformation from downtrodden to triumphant and courageous woman.

Author’s note: It may seem like a strange idea, a novel about the British Army invading Britain, but it really did happen in Dec 43, arguably the lowest point in World War Two when defeat seemed imminent. I just wondered what if someone decided to resist the occupation of his village by his own side and what might that lead to a generation later when the village is still occupied, as it is to this day.