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  • Location: Essex ' Blackwater Island', Maldon

Blackwater

Blackwater

Why a Booktrail?

1999:  They feared the machines. They should have feared the people…

  • ISBN: 978-1916788985
  • Genre: Cli-fi, Crime, legal/political, Technothriller

What you need to know before your trail

The world is on edge. With the new millennium just days away, fears of the Millennium Bug are spiralling – warnings of computer failures, market crashes, even global catastrophe. But fifty miles east, on the frozen Blackwater Island, a different kind of mystery unfolds. A child’s body is discovered on the bracken, untouched by footprints, with no sign of how he died. And no one has come forward to claim him.

At the International Tribune, reporter Jonny Murphy senses something is off. Police are appealing for relatives, not suspects. An anonymous call led officers to the scene, but no one knows who made it. While the world fixates on a digital apocalypse, Jonny sees the real disaster unfolding closer to home. With just twenty-hour hours before the century turns, he heads to Blackwater – driven by curiosity, desperation, and the sting of rejection from his colleague Paloma.

But Blackwater has secrets buried deep in the frozen ground. More victims – some dead, others still paying for past sins. And when Paloma catches up to him, they stumble onto something far bigger than either of them imagined. Something that could change everything. The millennium is coming. The clock is ticking. Can Jonny stop it? Should he?

And what if Y2K wasn’t a hoax, but a warning…?

Travel Guide

Essex

The island in the novel – Blackwater – is fictional but there is a river of the same name and an island of another name here…

The island was inspired by the very real Gruinard Island off the coast of Scotland – a 196-hectare, uninhabited island best known for its history as a WWII anthrax experimentation site. The author mentions it in her author note for being a good example of a ‘secret’ island with secrets hat hides in plain sight.

BookTrail Boarding Pass: Blackwater

Destination/location: Essex ‘ Blackwater Island’, Maldon  Author/guide: Sarah Sultoon  Departure Time: 1999 – 2000

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