"Sinuously written, subtly subversive" - Beatrice Hitchman

Silently, digitally, a boy takes apart your family

A gripping techno-thriller that fuses Patricia Highsmith's psychological intensity with urgent climate activism. When teenage hacker Tom Snelling encounters coal broker Steve McInnes on a train, a chance collision sparks a devastating game of digital cat-and-mouse. Tom, a reclusive coding prodigy driven by eco-fury, systematically dismantles Steve's life—planting child pornography, triggering financial chaos, and exposing the moral rot beneath corporate respectability. But Tom is being watched by Mel, a gender-fluid intelligence operative, while MI5's shadowy "Glyph" operation secretly manipulates them both. As Tom's algorithms threaten to collapse the global fossil fuel industry, the question becomes: can one brilliant, damaged boy save the planet by burning down the system—or will his digital vengeance consume everything, including himself?

"Sinuously written, subtly subversive: a love song to our whirling, chilling, digital world. Will keep you on the edge of your (train) seat long after you’ve missed your stop…" — Beatrice Hitchman, author of All of You Every Single One

"A fast-paced, deliciously twisty tale" – Sarah Birch in The Hackney Citizen

More Praise for Martin Goodman

"Goodman writes with flare and panache, and the narrative fizzes along. Goodman’s novel soars." — The Times on On Bended Knees

"Heralds a new dawn for British writing" — Daily Post on On Bended Knees

"Beautifully structured and has a distinctive and haunting tone. Altogether a very clever and memorable piece of work." — Simon Mawer on The Cellist of Dachau

"A magical mystery tour in humility, truth, death, betrayal, forgiveness, the envelopment of nature, written as clearly and powerfully as a French Pyrenees river." — Karla Kuban (Marchlands) on I Was Carlos Castaneda

"A treat to read – a gripping, uncanny, gothic adventure" — Clive Bloom (Gothic Horror) on Forever Konrad

"It combines psychology at its darkest with a genuine sense of the uncanny – a powerful and disturbing experience" — Ramsey Campbell on Forever Konrad

"A great book about how to save the planet" — Coldplay on Client Earth

"The book is inspirational in a hardheaded, let’s go to work-and-get-real-results sort of way … There’s a global vision. It’s quietly amazing." — Oxford Today on Client Earth

"Goodman's attention to detail often combines with verbal felicity to memorialize even the most ordinary moments. Powerful and affecting work." — Paul Russell (Immaculate Blue) on Lessons from Cruising

"Such narrow, narrow confines we live in. Every so often, one of us primates escapes these dimensions, as Martin Goodman did. All we can do is rattle the bars and look after him as he runs into the hills. We wait for his letters home." — The Los Angeles Times on I Was Carlos Castaneda

"Extraordinary – An important, aching, artful novel" — The Toronto Star on The Cellist of Dachau

Martin Goodman has tackled the world in a thrilling range of fiction and nonfiction. His subjects are self-experimenting scientists and spiritual masters, shamans and Nazi war criminals, eco-warriors and world-class musicians, vampires and Tibetan lamas. His books have won awards, with settings that span the globe. More and more they wave red flags about ecological crises. His recent My Head for a Tree tells the story of the Bishnois, a community in India who fight with their lives to protect nature. He is emeritus professor at the University of Hull, an editor for Conservation Times, and shares a life with his husband between London, Los Angeles and the South of France.