This first class thriller with its worryingly feasible storyline is gripping stuff. Published in 2009 the novel was set shortly after the 2012 Olympics and predicted a near future where civil liberties had been eroded; a surveillance state of ‘totalitarian technology’ where the British government colludes with big business to spy on its subjects.
Just three years on from publication, Henry Porter’s ‘prophecies’ in The Dying Light have now come to pass with terrifying accuracy.
As well as being “one of the masters of the genre” (DAILY TELEGRAPH) Henry is a writer and journalist specialising in liberty and civil rights, and has been contributing to the GUARDIAN coverage of the NSA and GCHQ surveillance revelations of 2013. Click here to see his "Opinion Pieces" in the Guardian.
A chilling police surveillance thriller from 'one of the masters of the genre' Sunday Telegraph
At the funeral the bells of the church were rung open rather than half-muffled, as is usual for the dead. Kate Lockhart has come, along with corporate leaders, ministers and intelligence chiefs, to a beautiful town in the Welsh Marches to mourn her soul mate, David Eyam, the brightest government servant of his generation. All that remains of Eyam are the burnt fragments of a man killed far from home in a horrific explosion.
Eyam has left a devastating legacy which certain people at the funeral are desperate to suppress - but Kate Lockhart is equal to Eyam's legacy. She becomes the focus of the state's paranoiac power and leads the local resistance to it, directed from beyond the grave by Eyam.
And the state is no match for the genius of the dead...
An incredibly prescient thriller set in the aftermath of the Snowden news story from the bestselling author of Brandenburg.
'Former spook Kate Lockhart is enraged by the violent death of her old lover, David Eyam, head of British Intelligence. Even more chilling is the legacy he leaves behind which is set to spin the UK into a police state' Henry Sutton DAILY MIRROR
'In Henry Porter's exciting, timely and frightening story, a single brave, prescient individual eventually outwits megalomaniac officialdom. This book is primarily a can't-put-it-down , rattling good yarn but it's also a deadly serious and truly awful warning' Jessica Mann LITERARY REVIEW
'A daring, stylish and tensely paced thriller that brilliantly imagines the consequences for Joe Public should some of the government's suggested security proposals become law' METRO 'For those who like political thrillers, this is one of the season's best: scary, informative and, alas, eminently believable' ECONOMIST
'He is widely recognised now as a real master of the literary espionage thriller, a true sucessor to le Carre' PRESS GAZETTE
'The Dying Light bowls along at a cracking pace with more twists and turns than a street map of Venice' INDEPENDENT
'Porter rails against that very British apathy which has already allowed the state to pass all the legislation necessary to turn his dystopian nightmare into reality - the same apathy, ironically, which makes such nakedly polemical British novels so rare, and welcome' Jeremy Jehu DAILY TELEGRAPH
Author
About Henry Porter
Henry Porter has written for most national broadsheet newspapers. He was editor of the Atticus column on the Sunday Times, moving to set up the Sunday Correspondent magazine in 1988. He contributes commentary and reportage to the Guardian, Observer, Evening Standard and Sunday Telegraph. He is the British editor of the American magazine Vanity Fair and divides his time between New York and London.
