‘He may have prevented the world from falling into ruin, but Alex knows his work is not done yet.’
– The Coming Storm
Greg Mosse’s debut novel The Coming Darkness, was a Sunday Times Thriller of 2022, and a Waterstones Thriller of the Month 2022. Mosse’s second novel The Coming Storm, sees the return of his anti-hero the French special agent Alex Lamarque. It will be published April 25th with Moonflower Books and is described as ‘a chilling dystopian thriller’.
I am delighted to be taking part in the blog tour today for The Coming Storm, celebrating its upcoming publication with an extract, which I do hope you all enjoy.
[ About The Coming Storm ]
By 2037 the world’s been torn apart by global warming, religious wars and viruses. Against this turbulent setting French special agent Alex Lamarque is hunting eco terrorists attacking energy services and supply lines.
Battling with personal tragedy on one hand, and the intrusion of new-found celebrity on the other, Alex must re-emerge from self-imposed exile to reunite with Mariam – the woman he loves – and Amaury – his truest friend – to face the fight of their lives.
From the streets of Paris, the lithium mines of Southern Mali, and the mighty Aswan Dam, they come up against forces whose intentions are as devious as they are malign. Time is against them, and there’s more at stake than ever. Can they survive The Coming Storm?
A massive new talent in British fiction, Greg Mosse’s storytelling is complex and finely crafted, combining twisting plotlines, intelligent dialogue and ambiguous characters, all skilfully brought together in an epic climax. Never before has dystopian fiction been so chillingly real.
[ Extract ]
PROLOGUE
There were seven people present in Montparnasse cemetery, including
Alexandre Lamarque. In theory, none of them would ever speak again
of what they saw that night. The private interment was intended as
a kind of full stop, the final punctuation on a life lived in service to
the ideals of the French Revolution and nation: freedom, equality and
community.
A life sacrificed to those ideals, in a sense.
The Internal Security agent with flame-red hair, Emmeline Cantor,
had been given responsibility for the eulogy, despite her modest rank. It
turned out she had worked very closely with him – much more closely
than Alex had ever known.
The time was just after one o’clock in the morning, half an hour
after curfew, so that the event should pass off unobserved. The sky
was an uninterrupted dome of inky blue. A pleasant temperature, Alex
estimated, no warmer than twenty-two or twenty-three degrees. Not bad
for early autumn, if such a season could be said still to exist.
The coffin was already in the tomb – a small stone building about the
size of a garden shed. The lintel above the open iron door was inscribed
with his family name. They had all already been inside. By the light of
two LEDs, powered by a battery charged from a photoelectric panel on
the sloping roof, they had inspected his shadowed face, composed in
eternal sleep.
Why had they done that?
It had been, Emmeline Cantor told them, one of his last requests.
Alex supposed it was so that, should the question ever arise, there
would be enough people to confirm that he was truly gone.
Once they had filed back out, they sat on folding outdoor chairs –
rusty metal frames and narrow slatted seats – and Cantor spoke from the
entrance to the tomb, a halo around her head from the lights behind her,
her face hard to read, her voice unsteady.
‘He asked me to tell you that time is precious and should never be
wasted. That he was sorry to die when so much was left still to do. That
he trusted you and believed that your future triumphs would at least
equal your past defeats.’
She paused and turned her head towards each of the six pairs of eyes
focused on her. Alex was wishing he was anywhere but here, trapped
between the cypress trees and the excessive monuments to the dead.
Then Cantor bowed her head for a moment. When she looked up, she
sounded more composed.
‘This is what he said: “The conspiracy must still be out there, even
now preparing new attacks. Without the traitor at the heart of our
defences to mastermind them, they will be less grandiose, perhaps,
smaller, more local. But that means they will also be more devious, more
insidious. And harder to prevent. Obvious in hindsight, but invisible
until they are in train, at which point it will always be too late. It falls to
you to stop them. You each gave me your word that you would do so.
Now that I am dead, it would be an insult to my memory, don’t you all
think, if you failed in your promise?” Er…’ Cantor paused. ‘Perhaps I
should add that he asked me to tell you that was a kind of joke. He was
worried it wouldn’t come across.’
‘We understand,’ deadpanned Amaury Barra, Alex’s friend and
colleague. ‘We’re all laughing.’
‘Stop it, Amaury,’ chided Mariam Jordane, the woman Alex loved.
With a slight frown, Cantor went on: ‘He wanted you to hear a
definitive statement concerning his illness. Doctor Labeur has prepared
a summary.’
Cantor returned to her seat. The light from the doorway struck the
side of her face and Alex could see her cheek was damp from tears.
The man to his right stood up. Dr Labeur had been instrumental in
saving many lives – just not quite enough lives. He pulled up the right
sleeve of his sand-coloured linen jacket and popped out a holo from his
comm-watch, raising it in front of his chest, so that Alex was obliged to
watch his mouth move through the scrolling teleprompt.
‘We believed his infection to be in remission. His prognosis was
good and his test results trended towards eradication. His relapse was
unexpected. Madame Lamarque …’ Labeur’s eyes flicked away from
the scrolling words to Alex’s mother, Gloria Lamarque, a handkerchief
scrunched tight in her right hand, but her face calm, her eyes dry.
‘Madame Lamarque,’ the doctor repeated, ‘a victim of the same
infection, will continue to be monitored closely. But we believe her
case to be quite different. His rapid decline was the result, we fear,
of an unpredicted – indeed, unpredictable – mutation in the new virus
brought about by exposure to a persistent older virus, which had already
developed resistance to the available prophylactic. The virulence
of the final attack was rapid and did not respond to any treatments,
pharmacological or physiotherapeutic. There are, of course, no other
documented cases.’ He tapped his comm-watch and the scrolling holo
disappeared, as if sucked back inside. ‘He was, and remains, Patient
Zero.’
The Coming Storm – Purchase/Pre-order LInk
[ Bio ]
Greg’s first career was in theatre as actor, director & writer. He has lived and worked in Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Madrid. Having worked as an interpreter at a variety of international institutions, in 2015 Greg returned to theatre. Since then, he has written and produced 25 plays and musicals. He took advantage of 2020’s lockdown to fulfil a long-term ambition to write a powerful thriller.
Website ~ https://www.gregmosse.com/
X ~ @GregMosse
