Absolution

When vigilante justice-seeker Claymore Straker is witness to the murders of a family he has befriended, and his lover’s husband and son disappear, his investigations take him to the darkest places he could ever have imagined … The stunning fourth instalment in the critically acclaimed Claymore Straker series.

‘A stormer of a thriller – vividly written, utterly tropical, totally gripping’ Peter James

‘A fast-paced action thriller, beautifully written’ Tim Marshall, author of Prisoners of Geography

‘Hardisty is a fine writer and Straker is a great lead character’ Lee Child

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It’s 1997, and eight months since vigilante justice-seeker Claymore Straker fled South Africa after his explosive testimony to Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In Paris, Rania LaTour, Claymore’s former lover, comes home to find that her son and her husband, a celebrated human rights lawyer, have disappeared. On an isolated island off the coast of East Africa, the family that Clay has befriended is murdered as he watches.

So begins the fourth instalment in the Claymore Straker series, a breakneck journey through the darkest reaches of the human soul, as Clay and Rania fight to uncover the mystery behind the disappearances and murders, and find those responsible.

At times brutal, often lyrical, but always gripping, Absolution is a thriller that will leave you breathless and questioning the very basis of how we live and why we love.

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Praise for Paul E. Hardisty

‘A trenchant and engaging thriller that unravels this mysterious land in cool, precise sentences’ Stav Sherez, Catholic Herald

‘This is a remarkably well-written, sophisticated novel in which the people and places, as well as frequent scenes of violent action, all come alive on the page...’ Literary Review

‘Gripping and exciting … the quality of Hardisty’s writing and the underlying truth of his plots sets this above many other thrillers’ West Australian

‘Searing … at times achieves the level of genuine poetry’ Publishers Weekly

‘Beautifully written, blisteringly authentic, heart-stoppingly tense and unusually moving’ Paul Johnston

‘The plot burns through petrol, with multiple twists and turns’ Vicky Newham

Canadian Paul E Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The first four novels in his Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution all received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Telegraph Thriller of the Year. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.