It’s not often you have a book endorsed by Mick Herron, Ann Cleeves, Lee Child, Mark Billingham, Janice Hallett and Charlie Higson (among others) before it has even been published, but that is the (very fortunate) situation with my latest novel, Quantum of Menace, which came out in the UK on Oct 23rd. You can find buy links here: https://geni.us/quantumofmenace
The book is the first in a mystery series featuring Q from the Bond franchise. In Quantum of Menace, Q – aka Major Boothroyd – finds himself unceremoniously booted out of MI6. At odds with the future, he decides to return to his hometown to investigate the mysterious death of his childhood friend, Peter Napier, a quantum computer scientist who had been on the verge of a major breakthrough. This homecoming is fraught with tension. We get to meet Q’s estranged father – Mortimer Boothroyd – a surly, retired ancient Roman historian, and his even more estranged childhood fiancé, now the detective in charge of the original investigation into Napier’s death.
This isn’t a Bond-style spy thriller, but a traditional mystery with the tone somewhere between Mick Herron’s Slow Horses and Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club. If you liked those books, you will like this. There’s dry humour, cryptic clues, an insight into Q’s life at – and post – MI6, and, yes, Commander Bond puts in an appearance. How could he not!
The book – written at the invitation of the Ian Fleming estate – is entirely my own creation, albeit using characters that millions will be familiar with. The (fictional) small town setting – Wickstone-on-Water – is the sort of once sleepy place that often appears in cosy crime, but with a distinctly edgy vibe: a few thousand people whose halcyon view of the world is being tested by change.
I confess I’ve always had a soft spot for Q. He never appeared much in the books – almost everything we know about him comes from the films. But I always believed him to be a serious man, a scientist who takes himself – and his mission – helping safeguard the civilised world – as a sacred trust. That’s the Q I have brought to life. A real man with a complex back story.
For me, the dilemma was simple: how do I combine what we love about the Bond canon – for instance, the prickly relationship between Bond and Q – with everything a sophisticated cosy audience has come to expect? i.e. wit, quirky personas and an emphasis on the puzzle rather than say rocket launchers fired from the tops of speeding trains?
The result is Quantum of Menace. The book is gathering a life of its own. I do hope you give it a go!
NOTE: The book received star reviews in most of the national newspapers in the UK and has ended up on many end-of-year best crime and thriller lists – it would make a perfect Christmas gift. Have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!
I am incredibly excited that my first psychological thriller, The Girl in Cell A, is out today. The book releases in hardback (and e-book or audio) on 1 May 2025 in the UK, with the USA hardback to follow in July (though US e-book and audio are also out on 1 May). It is my first standalone novel, and my first thriller set in America. The story is as follows:
The book is set in the small mining town of Eden Falls, run by the Wyclerc dynasty and its ruthless patriarch Amos Wyclerc. Convicted of murdering Amos’s heir when she was just seventeen, Orianna Negi has always maintained her innocence. But there are holes in her memory, a blind spot over that fateful day. Did she really kill Gideon Wyclerc? And what happened to Gideon’s teenaged daughter, Grace, who vanished that same day, eighteen years ago? Forensic psychologist, Annie Ledet, is tasked with unlocking Orianna’s faulty memory and separating the real woman from the true crime celebrity she has become in the years since the killing. But as their sessions progress, Annie reaches into Orianna’s past to a shattering truth…
It has taken me three years to write this book. I am incredibly passionate about it and very very keen for you to read it. You can find an extract at the bottom of this newsletter.
If you love a big meaty read with all the claustrophobia of a small town setting and the twists and turns of a psychological thriller then this is one for you.
Don’t take my word for it. Here’s what some of the top thriller writers in the world are saying about the book:
Masterful. A beautifully written, twisting psychological thriller ~ CHRIS WHITAKER
A triumphantly mind-bending puzzlebox of a book that will have you questioning everything ~ RUTH WARE
A thrillingly written and carefully researched journey into the dark world of forensic psychotherapy, amnesia and murder. Complex, completely convincing characters and twist you’ll never guess. A masterful achievement ~ ALEX MICHAELIDES
Both epic family tale and riveting psychological thriller, The Girl in Cell A is an utterly absorbing story with an ending that will leave you reeling ~ SHARI LAPENA
‘A fabulous thriller where small-town America and the sins of its inhabitants make for a wonderful page-turner’ ~ STEVE CAVANAGH
A superb psychological thriller. What a mammoth task Vaseem has taken on and the fact that he pulls it off is astonishing. A terrific reading experience with a total shocker of an ending ~ LIZ NUGENT
Masterful. So clever I think it melted my brain. This clever, intense, beautifully written mystery about family, loyalty and lies had me frantically turning the pages and suspecting everyone. Impossible to put down ~ C.L. TAYLOR
An utterly captivating, multi-faceted psychological thriller that keeps you turning the pages. A real triumph! ~ B.A. PARIS
A triumph. A gripping thriller, a saga of a family and its terrifying secrets and a tale of redemption to break your heart ~ NICCI FRENCH
Vaseem Khan turns his razor sharp intellect away from the Indian subcontinent to the backroads of rural America, but the results are the same. A thrilling, thought-provoking, suspenseful novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat ~ S.A. COSBY
Epic, ingenious storytelling and a brilliantly realised small town setting where everyone is a suspect. A fantastic thriller ~ TM LOGAN
An epic crime novel with an evocative setting, a cast of characters who feel real and a multitude of twists and turns. If you liked The Silent Patient or All The Colours of the Dark, you’ll love this. ~ MARK EDWARDS
I’m very excited to announce that the fifth in my Malabar House series, CITY OF DESTRUCTION, is out in hardback (and digital) format this Nov in the UK, with other countries following soon after. Here’s the cover and description, with pre-order links, and an extract below.
City of Destruction
Bombay, 1951
A political rally ends in tragedy when India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, kills a lone gunman as he attempts to assassinate the divisive new defence minister, a man calling for war with India’s new post-Independence neighbours. With the Malabar House team tasked to hunt down the assassin’s co-conspirators – aided by agents from Britain’s MI6 security service – Persis is quickly relegated to the sidelines. But then she is given a second case, the burned body of an unidentified white man found on a Bombay beach. As she pursues both investigations – with and without official sanction – she soon finds herself headed to the country’s capital, New Delhi, a city where ancient and modern India openly clash. Meanwhile, Persis’s colleague, Scotland Yard criminalist, Archie Blackfinch, lies in a hospital fighting for his life, as all around him the country tears itself apart in the prelude to war…
Pre-orders really help a book, so I would be immensely grateful if you ordered the book. You can order from all good bookshops including here: Waterstones or Amazon (Note: The US hardback will launch on March 4 2025, though the Kindle version will be out on Nov 28 2024. Pre-order from bookshops or here.)
The below is a pre-publication extract from CITY OF DESTRUCTION, a novel by Vaseem Khan.
CITY OF DESTRUCTION
by Vaseem Khan
They found the body curled up on a cracked shelf of black rock lapped at by the warm waters of the Arabian Sea, down by the tip of the Malabar Hill peninsular. Parking the jeep on a dirt track leading from the main road, they made their way over the rocks to the corpse. The sun floated high overhead, in a sky of electric blue. Light made an ever-shifting tracery of prisms on the water’s surface. A crowd had gathered, though not of the human variety. The smell of death had its own bouquet and to a certain cross section of Bombay’s population the noxious odour of a burned body was akin to the aromas emanating from the five-star kitchens of the Taj Mahal Hotel. A gang of rooting pigs had turned up, accompanied by a pack of stray dogs, a brace of langurs, a flock of gulls, ravens and crows, and a goodly contingent of Bombay’s ubiquitous rat population. They were being kept at bay by a wizened homunculus in a uniform so big it made him look like an overgrown child. Handlebar moustaches hung to his pigeon chest. Persis watched the cut-price Zorro fence at the slavering menagerie with a bamboo lathi. Birla exchanged words with the man and determined that he was employed as a security guard at the home of the individual who had found the body, a retired executive who lived in one of the imposing homes set well back from the rocky shore. The man had been taking his daily early morning constitutional and stumbled across the body, almost losing his breakfast in the process. Persis focused on the corpse. The cadaver was curled into a foetal position, burned black. A few wisps of black hair remained on the skull, but the face was burned beyond recognition. The rest of the body too had clearly been engulfed by flame. Despite the heat, a chill ran through her. Death had rarely rattled her. Even at the academy, she had maintained a relative indifference when confronted by cadavers in the training morgue, looking on as many of her male colleagues had turned various shades of green. Her mother’s death and Sam’s grim fatalism had infected her at an early age. Death, after all, was the ultimate democratic institution. It came for everyone, rich or poor, moral or wicked. There was little point in being frightened of it. But anger, at the iniquitous nature of some deaths . . . Now that was permitted. What had driven this man to his death? Was it, as Roshan Seth had supposed, a case of self-immolation? Across Bombay, many had chosen this form of protest of late, the last mode of self-expression left to the truly desperate. Little good that it did. In the city of dreams, the crowd that invariably gathered as yet another protestor doused himself in gasoline outside yet another government office was as likely to offer a match as it was to come to the poor fool’s rescue. Birla cut into her thoughts. ‘The last time I smelled anything this bad, an elephant had done its business over my head.’ She decided not to ask. With Birla, a tale of woe – of which he had an inexhaustible supply – could be counted upon to take the listener down the sort of dark and winding path that usually ended in a mugging. She saw that the sub-inspector had tied a handkerchief around his mouth, giving him the look of a particularly inept highwayman. He was a strange man. Relegated to Malabar House because his daughter had refused the amorous attentions of a senior officer, Birla, like Persis herself, was a victim of circumstance rather than incompetence. Though he would have been the first to admit that, prior to his banishment, his career had managed to achieve as much forward momentum as a car with square wheels. Some men were born to mediocrity, some achieved it, and some had it thrust upon them. Birla was the result when all three aligned in a single individual. Nevertheless, of all of her fellow officers at Malabar House, Birla was the one who had been most willing to offer her acceptance. The fact that he was continually braced by two no-nonsense women at home had, perhaps, made it easier for him to do so. That and the fear that his wife might give him a good talking-to were he to adopt any other attitude. What was she doing here? Her every cell itched to be away from this godforsaken place, back in the thick of it. She should be out pursuing the real investigation, not standing here on this lonely slab of broken rock, surrounded by wild animals, mute witnesses to another chapter in the litany of human depravity that circumscribed the city they all called home. But Seth was right. When you pulled on the uniform, you gave the dead and the dispossessed certain rights. The right to demand justice, for one. Whether you could deliver it or not was a different matter. ‘Why come out here to do this?’ Birla’s voice was muffled behind his makeshift facemask. ‘What would be the point? You wouldn’t catch me setting fire to myself without an audience.’ She waited while he mentally traversed the winding pathway of his own question and arrived at the logical conclusion. ‘He didn’t do this to himself, did he?’ said the sub-inspector, quietly. ‘Someone did this to him.’ She gestured at the desolate rocks. ‘You’re right in that this would be the last place in Bombay to commit such an act. And how did he get out here? There’s no vehicle on the road.’ ‘Perhaps he walked? Or took a cab?’ ‘In which case, we should be able to track it down. Besides, a body this badly burned needs an accelerant. A petrol can. A container. There’s nothing here.’ ‘Maybe he threw it into the sea before he set himself alight?’ ‘Possibly. But it doesn’t feel right. Something terrible happened here.’ Birla looked back down at the body. ‘So someone killed him. And left the body out here, thinking that perhaps the tide would sweep it out to sea.’ She nodded. Birla had always been smarter than he looked, possessed of a low cunning that occasionally allowed him to leap to the right answer. ‘Whoever did this didn’t realise that the tide rarely gets this far up the rocks.’ The sub-inspector blew out a breath of disgust, ruffling the handkerchief around his mouth. He peered darkly at the corpse as if by some supernatural effort of will he might resurrect it or, better yet, make it vanish. ‘I suppose I better find a telephone,’ he muttered. ‘Call out the meat wagon.’ A raven hopped closer. He aimed a kick at it. The bird seemed unimpressed – it was almost the same size as Birla, and looked twice as vicious.
Pre-order now. Pre-orders really help a book. You can order from all good bookshops including here: Waterstones or Amazon (Note: The US hardback will launch on March 4 2025, though the Kindle version will be out on Nov 28 2024. Pre-order from bookshops or here.)
Vaseem Khan 