The Burning Time, by Peter Hanington

When you read a Peter Hanington thriller, prepare for a sleepless night.?It is like being accosted by the Ancient Mariner.?You will not be able to rest until he has finished his tale, and that it is because he is such an excellent narrator.?He keeps you on the edge of your seat, wanting to know what will happen next.

This story is about the climate catastrophe, and all the interests that come into play dealing with it.??It is centred around the Paris Conference of 2015, and the search for radical solutions.

In the book, Clive Winner is an Australian geo-engineer, who has become the blue-eyed boy because he is seeking solutions that do not necessarily involve a dramatic shift from fossil fuels to carbon neutral sources of energy.?He is looking at the possibilities of deflecting the heat of the sun and other solutions, while not causing over-arching damage to the environment.??Clive Winner needs investment in his projects and there are many interested parties.

One of these experiments involves the scattering of diamond dust into the seas.??A test is being carried out by a young Spanish pilot, Alma, off the coast of Andalusia in Spain.?It goes wrong, and Alma and her plane disappear.??Carlos, her boyfriend, her mother and her Uncle Pepe, a distant cousin of her mother, hoping she is not dead, begin to search for her.

Meanwhile, in London, a civil servant decides to talk to William Carver, our old hero journalist, about Clive Winner and the unorthodox contacts that he has with the Prime Minister, giving him Downing Street access, including access to money.??William Carver begins to investigate and this brings in our old friends from the previous books – Patrick, Naz and McCluskey.??I should say at this point that this is a standalone novel.??You do not need to have read the other William Carver books to read this novel.??I do however guarantee that once you have read this novel, you will seek them out.

That is all I am going to tell you about the plot.??Needless to say, William Carver and the team get involved in some very nasty situations, and there are some very unpleasant characters hiding in the shadows, biding their time to secure their objectives.

Peter Hanington as a journalist and previously as an anti-apartheid activist (and yes, I do know Peter Hanington), for instance, is well aware that the police spy on organisations like Greenpeace.??There is a reference to the Spycops saga, which was a truly nasty campaign authorised by senior officers in the Metropolitan Police, encouraging undercover policemen (never policewomen) to seduce activists, in order to gain access to information and to influence campaigning.??This is not a novelist’s invention.?There has been a public enquiry chaired by Lord Mitting, a retired judge, which is now in the public domain.

Peter Hanington writes with a flair and panache that will keep you glued to the page.??This is a book to be savoured.