The mutilated body of a senior banker is found on a remote Kent beach. Could the man's death be linked to the scandal engulfing his employer, a global investment bank created by the CIA to help it track terrorism financing?

Kate Pendragon, a financial analyst seconded to MI5, discovers that the bank is close to collapse, something that threatens to bring down the CIA. Elsewhere, intelligence is gathered on an Islamic terrorist cell intent on triggering a nuclear catastrophe to rig the world's financial markets – rigged, it would appear, by the Americans.

But will rogue agents in the CIA really allow the disaster to happen in order save their bank?

Pendragon believes the intelligence community on both sides of the Atlantic could be falling for a sophisticated hoax. Only, no one is listening to her. And the clock is ticking...

There is plenty of suspense in this well-written and ambitious first novel * Literary Review *
Doward's prose is smooth and pacy, and he conjures up a vivid and convincing world of spooks, gangsters, whitsleblowers and assassins. It all makes for a slick, brainy and very timely spy thriller, played out with cinematic verve on a fast moving international stage. An extremely entertaining debut * Sunday Mirror *
Toxic is a Kent noir novel that bursts with exuberance, building up to a rip-roaring finale... It's all wonderfully tangled and enjoyably villainous; Doward clearly revels in the drama...of the situation he's created. This is a writer who loves his genre... * The Observer *

Jamie Doward has been a journalist on the Observer for nearly twenty years. In his career, he has worked as a business reporter, the Home Affairs editor, the Religious Affairs correspondent, the Social Affairs Editor, the diarist and the Senior Reporter.