Steel Rain by
Tom Neale
hbk out April 05
Published by Headline
at £18.99
Vincent Piper is an FBI agent working in London whilst he tries to patch
things up with his estranged wife and daughter.
But, on his way to meet his daughter, he meets Monroe, an old partner of his
father ('The Wolf', an ex-FBI agent), who warns him to get out of town. Seconds later,
he sees the blast of a terrorist bomb and his daughter is blown up as she waits for
him outside a Charing Cross Road bookshop. Piper vows to stay on and seek
revenge on her killers and he suspects
Piper suspects Monroe, might be involved and goes back to America, where
his father is on his deathbed, to find out if the attack could have anything to do with
his past? Meanwhile, two new women enter his life. Sarah, who was his
daughter's tutor at sculpture class and becomes his lover, and Celeste, a mysterious
lady who befriends him at a chance meeting in a bar and subsequently helps him
race his daughter to hospital when the bomb explodes. Celeste, he finds out, is
working as a high class hooker. Could they have an ulterior motive for helping him.
Indeed, whose side are they on?
This is Tom Neale's first novel and it is a stunning debut. The writing is fast
and pacy and written in a factual journalese style as befits a freelance reporter. After
a series of red herrings, the story builds to a climax with a dramatic and totally
unexpected denouement, with a bomb at the American Embassy in Regents Park
where crowds have gathered to unveil Sarah's statue to Martha.
It is a plot that would lend itself well to film, I could see Harrison Ford as
Piper, and will certainly lead into a series.
(
Ron Ellis
Author of the highly acclaimed Johnny Ace, series set in Liverpool)
Steel Rain by
Tom Neale
