Encounter with ISIS (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781717813107)

"John Mordred comes alive on the page and is a character readers will not soon forget " - The Booklife Review.

Not for the first time in his career, John Mordred finds himself left out in the cold. When the 14-year-old daughter of a British government minister exits the country, apparently bound for Syria and the toxic clutches of ISIS, everyone else in his department is dispatched to Turkey to forestall her. Thanks to his "impressive interpersonal skills", he's needed in Britain.

Yet, for better or worse, his fairly inconsequential road, and their momentous one, begin to converge. Because no sooner has he embarked on his own investigation than the imprint of Islamic State appears here too.

Too much of a coincidence?

Possibly... but he finds no evidence of a 14-year-old female.

Yet not everything is as it seems. For example, what about the missing girl's well-documented antipathy to Islamofascism? Or her sudden conversion to radicalism on the very day of her departure? Or the complete absence of any sight or sign of her in Istanbul - or elsewhere?

Soon Mordred has theories of his own and, as so often in the past, they drive him out on a limb. Along the way, he is forced to confront an impossible question. How to account for the appeal, to some British citizens, of an organisation that practises genocide, mass torture and the reduction of women to sex slaves?

Written in 2014, when so-called Islamic State looked relatively unstoppable (at least, in Syria), Encounter with ISIS considers how barbarism regularly comes banging on the doors of civilisation, and how complacency is never an option for those who abhor it.

"The characterizations in this first-class piece of fiction are deep and absorbing, as is the byzantine plot line that forces the reader to pay close attention." - Publisher's Daily.