Salvage

The far north of England, several decades into the future, the Gulf stream has ceased: Quinn has been appointed by the government to conduct an audit on a remote area of land designated for a brand new model town. As Quinn arrives to greet the local developer, the surveillance cameras spin into overdrive, and soon he is immersed in a quagmire of corruption that will put his integrity to the ultimate test. He meets Owen, a suicidal farmer whose every last pig, chicken, and sheep has been culled. And Winston, a former journalist and alcoholic with a gallery of incriminating photos of rising water below the site; and Pollard, the local Man of God whose faith is for sale. But it is Anna, Quinn's some-time girlfriend in charge of 'digging, filling and capping' the dead cattle pits, who faces the deepest abyss of all. And as the heavens open once again, the mountains of toxic soil that surround the site slowly begin to shift. An all too plausible vision that depicts what is likely to unfurl if climate changes move implacably on, Robert Edric's latest novel is a devastating portrait of Man's ever-quickening descent into a self-inflicted hell. It is Edric's finest novel yet.