Product Description

It seems to be a very normal Monday morning. But in the space of only a few days, the world's oil supplies have been severed and at a horrifying pace things begin to unravel everywhere. And this is no natural disaster: someone is behind this. Jenny is stuck in Manchester, fighting desperately against the rising chaos to get back to London, where her children are marooned as events begin to spiral out of control; riots, raging fires, looting, rape and murder. In the space of a week, London is transformed into a lawless and anarchic vision of Hell. Jenny's estranged husband, oil engineer Andy Sutherland, is stranded in Iraq with a company of British soldiers, desperate to find a way home to his family, trapped as transport links and the very infrastructure of daily life begins to collapse around him. And against all this, a mysterious man is tracking Andy's family. He'll silence anyone who might be able to reveal the identities of those behind this global disaster. It seems that the same people who now have a stranglehold on the future of civilisation have flexed their muscles before, at other significant tipping points in history, and they are prepared to do anything to keep their secret - and their power - safe.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4608 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

Alex Gordon, Peterborough Evening Telegraph
"few books have made my heart race and blood pressure soar like this one... it had me on the edge of my seat."

Review
"Alex Scarrow is a crime writer of real distinction" (GOOD BOOK GUIDE )

Daily Telegraph
'Alex Scarrow's depiction of Britain as only a few hours away from
disintegration is chillingly plausible. This is the perfect book to give to somebody who opposes your plans to build a wind farm.'

Customer Reviews

Superb story, great characters...will scare the hell out of you
Alex Scarrow has written a frightening story that may seem to have an obvious premise (in a nutshell, we're far too reliant on oil); however it's all the more frightening for how little serious consideration we give this issue.
Various events - it'll spoil the story to go into too much detail - result in the world's oil supply being more or less destroyed. Throughout the world and especially the UK, chaos and panic begin. Those with supplies of food and water are relatively prepared. Unfortunately, they're also targets for those without and any ideas of decency and civilisation go out the window in the struggle for survival. There is no 'Spirit of the Blitz' mentality; it's everyone for himself.
In the middle of this, Andy Sutherland attempts to get back to England from Iraq while his estranged wife works her way from Manchester to London in order to get to their two children. The problem is, someone else is after one of their children for reasons connected to the cause of the disaster. At the same time, the country is tearing itself apart.

Read the first couple of pages and get ready for a ride.

Best book of 2007 so far.
I read Alex's first novel and knew that I should pick up this lastest one on the day of release. It has surpassed expectations - it's a cliché but if you only read one book this summer make it this one. This is high praise, but I believe this book is one edit away from brilliant and two edits away from a classic...and in this genre that is a nigh on impossible feat. Let's hope he's scribbling away as we speak because I for one want more.

Scary, but could it really happen!!!
I found this latest book by Alex to be really scary, could any of this really happen, 9/11 etc. Did that happen or were the government behind it all, I don't know and I'm sure many others don't either. We live in a world dominated by convenince, take that away and anything that Alex is describing here is possible, if not probable. No Oil, Gas, Electricity we wouldn't survive or would we! What happened before we managed to harness all these natural resources. Now it's all gone again everybody at war with each other fighting for the few scraps left. This is no holocaust but can we make it into one. Once again Alex is bang on the button hitting those nerves that we never knew we had. A must read for everyone not just those environmentalists.