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The Burning Time

On sale

6th July 2023

Price: £24.99

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Selected: Audiobook Downloadable / ISBN-13: 9781529305289

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Old-school reporter William Carver returns in this deeply topical and dramatic international thriller.

‘Smart and topical’ Financial Times (An FT Best New Thriller 2023)

‘A compelling, fast-paced thriller’ Sun


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.

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

‘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

(P)2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Reviews

Edward Stourton
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
Literary Review
Well written and paced, this thriller is both a tribute to and a demonstration of the importance of traditional investigative journalism
Peter Hennessy, author of A DUTY OF CARE
The Burning Time is terrific. [It] will be a classic of the genre
Shots Mag
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
Financial Times (Best New Thrillers 2023)
A smart and topical thriller
Sun
A compelling, fast-paced thriller blended with environmental issues. Hotly topical
Straits Times
Deftly plotted . . . a propulsive read
Irish Independent
This adrenalin-laced adventure packs a mighty punch . . . Peter Hanington's global thriller could not be more topical
Material Witness blog
Seeks to expose the dark arts, denialism and danger of the carbon lobby and adds another fine and important thriller to an exceptional series
James O'Brien, LBC
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