I’d like to thank Kate Mitchell and Andy Lynch for their wealth of experience on the probation service. Hester Russell, Head of Crime at GWB Harthills, expertly guided me on legal procedures. Dr Stuart Hamilton once again was kind enough to look over the forensic aspects, and retired detective inspector Kim Booth helped with many issues on police procedure. Other police sources have asked not to be identified, and I have respected their anonymity. Particular thanks to John Sanders for his help on Nystagmus. Shaun Foggett of Crocodiles of the World, near Burford in Oxfordshire, advised me on the construction of reptile houses, while Craig Surfleet’s knowledge of plastering was invaluable. Rebecca Napier was kind enough to share her nursing knowledge of bariatric patients. Thanks to Tim Cary and Sara Westcott for reading the early manuscript. I am indebted to all of them, and any mistakes remaining are my own.

Tagg’s Island and Ash Island do exist, but I have simplified their geography a little for the purposes of the plot. My thanks go to Alessandra Thorbjorn for the map.

The rather surprising world of mukbang can be found on YouTube, for those with a strong stomach.

Michael Bhaskar and the Canelo team as always were enthusiastic backers of the book. Jacqui Lewis did an excellent editing job. Of course above all is my wife and first reader, Louise, to whom this book is dedicated.

Next in Series

Next in DCI Craig Gillard Crime Thrillers:

The Bodies at Westgrave Hall

A large country mansion. A locked room. A gruesome murder.

Find out more

The Bodies at Westgrave Hall

Don’t miss Nick Louth’s next thriller, coming in February 2021.

Air Force Colonel Lev Rossivsky checked the radar screen, picked up his largest binoculars and made his way up to the roof of the control tower of Kuznetsov Air Base. It was only a single flight of stairs, and led out onto a rough concrete roof. The wind was blowing from the east again, whipping up a fine sand from the endless miles of parched scrubland and leaving a rose-tinted haze that masked the distant sparkle of Lake Balkhash, eighty miles to the south. As he put the Carl Zeiss Jena lenses to his eyes he didn’t even glance at the rusting hulks of obsolete helicopters, or the remains of the 1950s MiG-15 jet fighter that littered the base. He was looking for something that even in all his thirty-year air force experience he had never seen. The base was not much used since the fall of Communism, but still had one great asset that came into play from time to time. It had the largest runway in Kazakhstan. Today, it might well need every inch of it.