Adrift

‘To be all at sea. To feel adrift. To drift apart. We managed all those things in landlocked Manchester. What did we have to lose by exchanging terra firma for the ocean?’

Adrift is a darkly comic literary thriller that through three alternating chapter cycles sees its middle-aged protagonists Serena Brinks and Leighton Tiding fleeing ‘broken Britain’ on a Brazil-bound container ship in late 2021; recalling a summer of illicit encounters in Manchester during the Covid pandemic, and untangling a murder mystery that has its roots in Leighton’s childhood on the Wirral. The disparate threads of these intriguing storylines dovetail as the novel reaches its dramatic conclusion.

Along the way, Leighton re-encounters his enigmatic schoolfriend Johnny Silverglass, with whom he had a teenage relationship based on sexual rivalry, music and excess; faces Johnny’s nemesis, the ruthless US businessman Blain ‘Big Dog’ Dobermann, and is forced to confront the book’s central question: faced with a world gone mad, do we rise up and challenge the system destroying our planet or seek sanctuary for ourselves and those we love?

Like the author’s previous novel, Hong Kong Rocks (Proverse, 2019), Adrift is told from multiple viewpoints and features strong female leads, satirical elements, a page-turning plot and pitch-black humour.

Praise for Adrift:

‘A tale of Modern England, from ‘90s optimism to Brexit and Covid, brought to life with billionaires, spies and rekindled marriages. Quite excellent.’ Eoghan Walls, author of The Gospel of Orla (Seven Stories Press)

‘A towering achievement of a novel. Kept me gripped and guessing. Flitting back and forth between the 1980s, the Covid years, and various points in between; from the Wirral to strange islands off the coast of South America; Adrift is equal parts thriller, coming of age tale, and love story.’ Stewart McKay, author of The Ballad of Billy Lopez (Proverse)