Böcker av Ian McKinley

In the mid 21st century, a Swiss cyber-security firm tasked with countering ransomware attacks on major financial institutions exposes a Russian criminal gang supported by a top North Korean hacker. This leads to the discovery of a much more dangerous plot to destroy economic databases, aimed at causing chaos on a global scale. The defence against this threat requires extending the abilities of neural networks run on an advanced quantum computer, creating a form of artificial intelligence which can compromise the cryptography forming the basis of the security of both computer networks and electronic communication. Not only does this tool exceed expectations, it opens a Pandora's Box of other possible applications that could risk destruction of civil liberties and the entire basis of free democracies.The team use this tool to combat threats from China, the USA and also criminal organisations who are competing to gain control of such power. Inevitably, this leads to inflicting punishments that are comparable with the impacts of conventional warfare. Recognising the dangers of wider access to this technological singularity, they decide to actively limit further developments in this direction elsewhere so that, for the near future, this small group are reluctantly placed in the position of a global oligarchy - with all the responsibilities and dangers that this entails.

In the mid 21st century, common mode failure results from a huge electro-magnetic pulse from the sun, dwarfing anything seen in recorded history. This destroys all unprotected electrical or electronic equipment which, with 70% of the world's population living in urban areas, effectively removes all services required to support them. Although there is immediate decimation of populations in vulnerable areas, over a longer term the impacts are even greater as urban areas become uninhabitable, the basis for high-tech agriculture and fishing is lost, communication and transport infrastructure vanishes and medical services collapse. This inevitably leads to local breakdown of society, famine and plagues, leading to regional scale conflicts - a true Four Horsemen apocalypse.The novel focuses in particular on two contrasting situations - a university department located in the Japanese city of Nagoya and the tourist community of Cupecoy in the Caribbean holiday island of Sint Maarten. In both cases, individuals fight to understand what has happened and find solutions to avoid otherwise inevitable collapse into anarchy. This is put in context by vignettes from other locations around the globe.Initial struggles to survive on a local and regional basis slowly develop into projects to rebuild, with the aim of avoiding the errors of the past. This requires acknowledgement that the over-populated planet cannot be supported by technology that is closer to the early 20th century, so the deaths of billions is unavoidable - made only worse by the impacts of a globally-warmed climate. As if this was not bad enough, those fighting to speed recovery need to fight against others interested only in gaining from the chaos - from the depredations of a new breed of pirates in the Caribbean to attacks on the remaining "nuclear hard" communication system by jingoistic conspirators at the highest level of the US military.

The word pandemic tends to cause fear, based mainly on experience with COVID - a highly transmissive but relatively mild disease compared to others such as Ebola and Black Plague. Although further natural pandemics will certainly emerge in the future, the impacts of tailored diseases produced by genetic engineering could be very much worse and, if that is their aim, these have the potential to depopulate much of the planet and could cause the collapse of civilisation as we know it. In the middle of this century, the impacts of uncontrolled climate change have turned the few countries with the resources to weather them into virtual fortresses, with barricaded frontiers guarded to avoid being swamped by those escaping from less fortunate lands. Switzerland, in particular, has become a refuge for the mega-rich, many of whom can be accused of contributing to the global warming catastrophe. It is thus under constant attack by terrorists who are offended by this blatant injustice.A perfect storm emerges when, under such conditions, a plot to create a population-control pandemic emerges. When this plot is serendipitously uncovered by a small Swiss counter-terrorist unit, they must find a way to combat it alone, neutralising threats in Europe and Asia, while keeping their actions secret to avoiding the inevitable global panic that would result if such a threat became known.Presented from the perspective of the unit leader, the challenges of following a trail of evidence around the world and avoiding the deadly traps set for them are complicated by developing emotional relationships with his team members. Although social acceptance of such physical relationships is not a problem in the mid-21st century, controlling them to avoid risks to the operation is tricky, especially when it transpires that the vector that provides immunity to the pandemic is an engineered sexually-transmitted virus.

Detective Jim Holmes moved from the London Met to Tokyo in order to widen his experience, working with the fabled Chief Inspector Stella Koide. This turns out to be much more than he bargained for, when the murder of a Kabuki-cho prostitute leads to identification of a series of sadistic murders far beyond his worst nightmares. Attacks on the detectives expose links to the yakuza and also members of an exotic nightclub that caters for the more exotic sexual tastes of the ultra-rich.The team's uncanny ability to solve cryptic clues reveals deeper layers of an international conspiracy, with links to illegal human genetic engineering and corporate espionage run from the other side of the world. To expose the secret manipulator behind this labyrinthine plot will require direct confrontation on his home ground. As the risks to the detectives increase, Koide¿s high-tech tools and Holmes' understanding of the character of their foe must be combined, not only to crack the case, but also to keep them alive long enough to do so.