The Bleak

WINNER OF THE 2014 CHANTICLEER CLUE AWARD FOR PRIVATE EYE/NOIR FICTION!

Sam Dyke is back in this gripping new detective thriller! The private investigator who never gives up until the bad guys are caught—or worse.

For Sam, taking this particular case is not promising. His client is a secretary who’s watching her boss fall apart, and she can’t bear it. The case requires subtlety and finesse and so isn’t his usual kind of job. But he likes her and takes it anyway.

And he soon discovers that it’s not the pressures of work that are getting to her boss. It’s his colleagues, a group of cultish scientists. Their leader is a hyper-intelligent seer/visionary who has a personal philosophy that is taking him towards one final act—to produce a calamitous event that will destroy the lives of hundreds of people. Or more.

Dyke sets himself on a course to prevent this madman from achieving his ends. A course that endangers him, his new partner and it seems anyone else who gets in the way of this doomsday plan …

Sam is a private investigator from a working-class environment who works amongst the wealthy and privileged of the Cheshire set—those whose morals and levels of discretion are offensive to him and go against his own values, forged in a strong family environment. The mysteries he unravels become personal crusades against entitlement, wealth and the abuse of power. Although he doesn’t moralise, he gets angry when he sees people who lie, steal and murder to get their way. Like Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade he has a clear view of what the world is actually like, but he nevertheless wants evil-doers set straight and will do what he can to help.

“I enjoy Lee Child, Robert Crais, Tess Gerritson. So I think Keith Dixon is up there with the greats.” – Amazon Reviewer

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