My film researcher came to me with the most outrageous proposal. ‘We need to go to Cleveland and film a mile underground.’ I was nonplussed, we were making a film on astronomy and we had only just returned from the United States.
‘No not that Cleveland,’ she said seeing my expression, ‘The one in Yorkshire, where they are looking for cosmic particles underground.’ It suddenly made sense. Our BBC Horizon on the Big Bang and Cold Dark Matter involved looking at both the smallest and the largest structures in the universe. From quarks to galaxies.
My latest thriller Out of Sight was inspired by the making of that film and naturally my characters went down that mine, one of the deepest in Europe. It’s a dark and dangerous place and a great location for thrills and spills. They too are trying to make a film, but unlike ours it contains fatal casualties and the risk of international war.
Thousands of miles above the pitch-black mine there is mayhem in the skies. Satellites are being crashed into space junk. Communications and weapons are under threat.
Nathalie Thompson, an investigative documentary maker and her partner make an outrageous proposal ... and it’s not just to go to Cleveland.
OUT OF SIGHT
SATELLITES AND SPACE JUNK
DANGER IN THE SKIES
When rogue junk collides with a television satellite 22,000 miles into space, blind cosmologist Harry Stones approaches film director Nathalie Thompson to make an investigative documentary. Undeterred by Harry’s lack of sight, their quest leads them from the peaks of Arizona to a mile-deep mine in Yorkshire, and finally to a launch pad in Kazakhstan. As more and more satellites keep falling out of the sky, their curiosity turns to fear. Forewarned of the possible outbreak of WWIII, can Harry and Nathalie prevent the most catastrophic space collision of all time?
‘An up-to-the-minute, globe-spanning roller-coaster of a thriller’ Abir Mukherjee, author of Death in the East
‘A terrific pitch-perfect thriller laden with contemporary insight’ Adam Brookes, author of Spy Games
Publisher: RedDoor Press
April 24, 2001
Paperback £8.99
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