Absolution

Description

It is 1997, eight months since vigilante justice-seeker Claymore Straker fled South Africa after his explosive testimony to Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In Paris, Rania LaTour, journalist, comes home to find that her son and her husband, a celebrated human rights lawyer, have disappeared. On an isolated island off the coast of East Africa, the family that Clay has befriended is murdered as he watches. So begins the fourth instalment in the Claymore Straker series, a breakneck journey through the darkest reaches of the human soul, as Clay and Rania fight to uncover the mystery behind the disappearances and murders, and find those responsible. Events lead them both inexorably to Egypt, where an act of the most shocking terrorist brutality will reveal not only why those they loved were sacrificed, but how they were both, indirectly, responsible. Relentlessly pursued by those who want them dead, they must work together to uncover the truth, and to find a way to survive in a world gone crazy. At times brutal, often lyrical, but always gripping, ABSOLUTION is a thriller that will leave you breathless and questioning the very basis of how we live and why we love.

Paul Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a cafe in Sana'a, and was one of the last Westerners out of Yemen before the outbreak of the 1994 civil war. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). He is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.

* `A solid, meaty thriller - Hardisty is a fine writer and Straker is a great lead character' Lee Child * `A trenchant and engaging thriller that unravels this mysterious land in cool, precise sentences' Stav Sherez, Catholic Herald * `Reconciliation for the Dead is a gripping, page-turning thriller that is overflowing with substance to go along with Hardisty's atmospheric prose and strong narrative style' Craig Sisterson, Mystery Magazine * `This is a remarkably well-written, sophisticated novel in which the people and places, as well as frequent scenes of violent action, all come alive on the page...' Literary Review * `Hardisty doesn't put a foot wrong in this forceful, evocative thriller ... the author's deep knowledge of the settings never slows down the non-stop action, with distant echoes of a more-moral minded Jack Reacher or Jason Bourne' Maxim Jakubowski * `The writing at times is poetic, at other times filled with tension in a narrative complete with well delineated characters and several shocks. Highly recommended' Shotsblog * `Fast-paced, gripping and exciting' Western Australian