The Derwent Files · Book 3
Salamander
Out now
The works closed in 1980. The furnace was sealed. Someone still had the key.
Kindle and paperback to follow — planned for mid-November, subject to Amazon review.
Consett, November. The steelworks went decades ago and took the town's heart with them. All that's left in the valley is No. 2 furnace at Hagg Bank: a rusting iron stack, a scheduled monument, sealed with welded plate since 1983.
Days before the furnace is due to be lit up for Bonfire Night, the heritage trust opens the hearth door and finds its own chairman inside, alone in the dark on the frozen iron. He was alive for days after the padlock went on, and people walked past.
DI Kit Brannigan has a town full of old steelmen who remember the winter of the strike and won't say what happened in it. Then a second man vanishes into the dark, and the clock starts.
Book three of The Derwent Files.
Opening extract
The fire on the picket line was the only warm thing left in the valley.
The lad had come out of the cabin with the crew's tea and been caught on the way back, and told to stop and get warm. He stood as close to it as they'd let him, which wasn't very close, because he was sixteen and an apprentice and it wasn't his strike, not the way it was theirs.