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Strike a Match #4
Over By Christmas
Two deaths could be an accident. Three must be murder.
2039, twenty years after the AIs went to war, plague and famine has reduced the global population to a hundred million. Most of the planet is a wasteland, with only a handful of enclave-nations preserving a dim shadow of civilisation. Technology has regressed to the era of steam trains, telegrams, and sailing boats, but democracy survived and is again under threat.
Three terrorist insurgencies have swept across Europe, pillaging farms, burning villages, destroying two decades of fragile recovery. Those refugees who escaped the massacres fled to the coast. Like a century before, Calais and Dunkirk have become the front line.
On the home front, rationing continues, and another ice-age winter has begun. Christmas is only days away, but Constable Ruth Deering’s mood is anything but festive. In the walled city of Dover, a lonely chef is discovered dead, poisoned. What first appeared to be an accident is soon suspected to be the work of a serial killer who is certain to strike again.
On the front line, Henry Mitchell doesn’t view this as war, just another crime against humanity during the twenty-year-long battle for survival. As hastily built bastions are fortified by a conscript-militia, Mitchell ventures deep behind the lines, hunting for the mastermind responsible for this latest assault.
In the new British capital of Twynham, a peace treaty with the separatist kingdom of Leicester is in peril. Until it’s signed, the soldiers laying siege to the royalist redoubt can’t be redeployed to the front.
As rusting tanks are recovered for repair, as new regiments are raised, and spies are sent east, the nation prepares for a war that certainly won’t be over by Christmas.
2039, twenty years after the AIs went to war, plague and famine has reduced the global population to a hundred million. Most of the planet is a wasteland, with only a handful of enclave-nations preserving a dim shadow of civilisation. Technology has regressed to the era of steam trains, telegrams, and sailing boats, but democracy survived and is again under threat.
Three terrorist insurgencies have swept across Europe, pillaging farms, burning villages, destroying two decades of fragile recovery. Those refugees who escaped the massacres fled to the coast. Like a century before, Calais and Dunkirk have become the front line.
On the home front, rationing continues, and another ice-age winter has begun. Christmas is only days away, but Constable Ruth Deering’s mood is anything but festive. In the walled city of Dover, a lonely chef is discovered dead, poisoned. What first appeared to be an accident is soon suspected to be the work of a serial killer who is certain to strike again.
On the front line, Henry Mitchell doesn’t view this as war, just another crime against humanity during the twenty-year-long battle for survival. As hastily built bastions are fortified by a conscript-militia, Mitchell ventures deep behind the lines, hunting for the mastermind responsible for this latest assault.
In the new British capital of Twynham, a peace treaty with the separatist kingdom of Leicester is in peril. Until it’s signed, the soldiers laying siege to the royalist redoubt can’t be redeployed to the front.
As rusting tanks are recovered for repair, as new regiments are raised, and spies are sent east, the nation prepares for a war that certainly won’t be over by Christmas.
- GenresScience Fiction
276 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 27, 2021
11 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Frank Tayell
55 books486 followersAuthor of post-apocalyptic and near-future science fiction, with a focus on democracies struggling against dystopia.
For more information, or to join the mailing list, please visit; www.FrankTayell.com, facebook.com/FrankTayell, or facebook.com/TheEvacuation
For more information, or to join the mailing list, please visit; www.FrankTayell.com, facebook.com/FrankTayell, or facebook.com/TheEvacuation
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 15, 2022
It's been a while but were finally back to the world of Constable Ruth Deering. Set twenty years after a apocalyptic permanent power out, the fragmented Britain is staring to move together again. On the continent however barbaric forces seem to have allied and are pushing towards the channel, the tunnel and Dover where Ruth is now stationed. Mr Mitchell is on the French Belgian border where co-ordinated hit and run attacks are testing the security of te Main French Belgian road, using resources that seem to be from a well supplied source. What does this have in connection to a seeming suicide back in Dover that seems to link to refugees from the continent?
January 19, 2022
A good book as always, just found this one a little slow in places.
Great storyline with good characters, and clearly going to be part of a long running series. If this is so I’d just ask for the pace to be picked up a little.
That’s really my only criticism of an excellent book in an excellent series.
Great storyline with good characters, and clearly going to be part of a long running series. If this is so I’d just ask for the pace to be picked up a little.
That’s really my only criticism of an excellent book in an excellent series.
October 2, 2021
Over by Christmas
Better then I expected, but surely not the end for our people, who we have watched grow over the four books. We need an end, do they survive? Is it the end of the war? Not so much a cliff hanger but interrupted sentence! So need a further book to wrap up.
Better then I expected, but surely not the end for our people, who we have watched grow over the four books. We need an end, do they survive? Is it the end of the war? Not so much a cliff hanger but interrupted sentence! So need a further book to wrap up.
August 8, 2023
Excellent read, just a little different
So far read all My Tayells books. Yet to find one I didn't like. Probably one of the best post apocalyptic fiction writers I have found in years.
So far read all My Tayells books. Yet to find one I didn't like. Probably one of the best post apocalyptic fiction writers I have found in years.
February 27, 2022
Over by chirstmas
Very good read fourh in the series , not to spoil for other readers , nice the way great Britain is being unified
Very good read fourh in the series , not to spoil for other readers , nice the way great Britain is being unified
January 9, 2023
Generally good
The fourth book in the series has proven to be good, overall, but has failed to.grip as previous instalments have.
The fourth book in the series has proven to be good, overall, but has failed to.grip as previous instalments have.
February 22, 2023
This was a solid entry in the Strike a Match series. As usual, very plot-driven, with very little character development. The normal players were separated for much of the book, all chasing their own crimes which, unsurprisingly, connected up in the end. The series itself is a great take on a post-apocalyptic world where there are no zombies or monsters, just the typical bad guys that already existed, along with solid world rebuilding.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews