Description

Racing between Sydney, New York, Seville and London, The Burning Time is an intelligent, timely and fast-paced thriller for the twenty-first century.

A FINANCIAL TIMES Best New Thriller 2023

READERS ARE GRIPPED BY THE BURNING TIME:

‘A real page-turner. Fast-paced chapters take us around the globe as the story develops’
‘A gripping story of twists and surprises’
‘A dazzling blend of plausibility and excitement’

Australian inventor and geoengineer Clive Winner is the genius who brought the Great Barrier Reef back from the brink, yet his ambition goes well beyond that. He wants to save the planet.

For the all-powerful fossil-fuel industry, Winner is their ‘get out of jail free card’. If he can engineer a solution to climate change, business can continue as usual.

When old-school journalist William Carver is tipped off by a trusted Whitehall source that climate scientists have begun to go missing in suspicious circumstances, his gut instinct tells him to follow the story. It rapidly becomes clear that scientists, green campaigners and well-intentioned politicians are in the firing line; William Carver and his colleagues must move fast to find out who is behind the disappearances. They know the journalist’s job is to speak truth to power – but first you must uncover that truth and this time it’s buried deeper than ever.

PRAISE FOR THE BURNING TIME:

‘A compelling, fast-paced thriller’
Sun

‘Deftly plotted . . . a propulsive read’
Straits Times

‘This adrenaline-laced adventure packs a mighty punch’
Irish Independent

‘A brilliant thriller with a timely and essential reminder of what journalism is supposed to be’
James O’Brien, LBC

Publisher Review

A smart and topical thriller * Financial Times (Best New Thrillers 2023) * A compelling, fast-paced thriller blended with environmental issues. Hotly topical * Sun * This adrenalin-laced adventure packs a mighty punch . . . Peter Hanington’s global thriller could not be more topical * Irish Independent * Deftly plotted . . . a propulsive read * Straits Times * Peter Hanington is a master of his craft and in William Carver he gives us the hero we didn’t know we needed in an age of fake news and egregious political liars . . . Hanington’s triumph is to blend a brilliant thriller with a timely and essential reminder of what journalism is supposed to be. He rides the zeitgeist like Frankie Dettori rides horses — James O’Brien, LBC The Burning Time is terrific. [It] will be a classic of the genre — Peter Hennessy, author of A DUTY OF CARE A wonderfully taut piece of plotting and, like all good roller-coasters, it regularly turns your stomach over as you are swept along; Hanington’s endlessly inventive story telling gives you that edgy feeling that everything (the whole world, in this case) could go horribly wrong by the end of the book, and it boasts more bodies than a Jacobean Revenge charity. Thank God for the reassuring presence of William Carver — Edward Stourton Well written and paced, this thriller is both a tribute to and a demonstration of the importance of traditional investigative journalism * Literary Review * Peter Hanington has a journalist’s nose for stories likely to make tomorrow’s Radio 4 news . . . The Burning Time is a headline-grabbing thriller * Shots Mag * Seeks to expose the dark arts, denialism and danger of the carbon lobby and adds another fine and important thriller to an exceptional series — Material Witness blog