Tackling the evil forces of cyber-terrorism - new novel
The Coming Fire offers a tale of global cyber-terrorism where a cabal of dark forces are determined to plunge the world into destruction.
It’s the third book in a major new trilogy by Chichester author Greg Mosse.
His debut novel, the first of the three, The Coming Darkness, was chosen as The Times Thriller of the Year and was Waterstones Thriller of the Month 2022. The second novel The Coming Storm received rave reviews last year.
The Coming Fire now sees the return of his anti-hero, French special agent Alex Lamarque to tackle his greatest challenge yet. Will he prevent a future clouded by treachery; and will he defeat his rivals before they bring the world to the brink of destruction?
It is published by Moonflower Books on July 17 at £9.99 and set in a dystopian near future where climate change has already ripped through the fabric of society. As the threat from the cyberterrorists grows, only one man stands in their way, French secret operative Lamarque.
“The trilogy is almost exactly 300,000 words and I am absolutely thrilled. Somebody asked me about the editorial process of working with the publisher and I said in general my response to a publisher's notes is to make sure that they want another book from me. I want to shape it towards the market that they anticipate. I get the creative flow that creates the story but then the editing process is with that market in mind.
“But I think the overall achievement is that the people that I have invented out of my imagination but also from my memories and my experience of life have had the stamina to sustain three novels now full of excitement. And the chapters where I give the back story to the characters, how they came to be who they are now, are very rewarding for the reader because I'm putting on stage people that feel genuinely 3D and relatable even though the circumstances in which I'm putting them are extraordinarily in this dystopian apocalyptic near future. You can feel the strangeness of the situation but these are relatable characters who are not just cartoonish cyphers that carry the plot.
“In the first book my hero Alex Lamarque who is an agent of the French security services confronts junior members of an evil organisation. In my second book he gets closer to the heart of the organisation but does not meet yet his final adversary. Now in the third book we see him finally confront the darkness referenced in the first book of the trilogy and the person he must track down before he can do the worst that he can.
“In the first book we see him discover that the orders that he is being given by his government are not entirely benign. What he has to do through the next two books is to pierce this cloud of uncertainty as to who he can trust and who he can work with and who he needs to work against.”
Following a fighter jet crash in the Haitian hinterland, special agent Alex Lamarque is taken captive by a violent, drug-addled gang, the only authority in this lawless territory.
Unknown to Alex, his lover Mariam Jordane has escaped the deadly flood of her home valley in the Pyrenees. But Mariam, along with Alex’s mother Gloria, is trapped on the wrong side of the world, facing a crescendo of dangers: the AI viruses crippling the digital state; the breakdown of law and order; and unexpected, terrifying news from a Paris observatory. Four thousand kilometres to the south, in the remote Sahara, the consequences of the cataclysmic events at the Aswan dam continue to reverberate throughout the world.
With the woman he loves presumed dead, his mother in danger, and no hope of rescue, Alex must tackle his greatest challenge yet: break free from the gang, uncover the truth, and finally face the perpetrators of the global conspiracy that’s seemingly hellbent on destroying the world. Can he – and the people he loves – escape the coming fire?