The Downing of the Drones by Noel Maurice out today

by | indielit, Introducing, Music

I would like to announce, with the sort of beaming pride usually reserved for happy couples gazing upon their toddler going to the toilet successfully for the first time, the publication of my brand new novel The Downing of the Drones.

Different to my first novel, published a few years ago now (these things just take time, y’know?), The Berlin Diaries Vol. I, which was a biographical book about my first year in Berlin way back in 1991, when Tacheles was in its infant state and the wall wasn’t long down, this one’s a thriller.

The-Downing-of-the-Drones-book-thriller-Noel-Maurice

It took me really a lot of years to admit that I wanted to write the kind of book that has car chases in it. Yes, I know, literary aspirations should really extend beyond that sort of thing, I should be wanting to reinvent the story wheel or abandon linear narrative for something new and exciting or long to write something that would generally improve the human condition, or at least point out where and how it could be improved, but I don’t wanna. What can I say? I want to write slightly noir books with car chases in them, and, you know, a love interest or two, a sex scene thrown in not to help the plot but just for the hell of it, that kind of thing.

So there we are.

The Downing of the Drones is a book that includes:
  • a brother and sister leaving Afghanistan to hit the refugee trail to Europe;
  • an alcoholic English ex-undercover cop seconded to Germany to help combat the rising tide of Islamist terror attacks (it’s set in 2018; it wasn’t until 2019 that the right wing started feeling left out enough to initiate their master plan of overtaking the Islamists in number and brutality of terror attacks in their cunning plan to get the world to see their point of view);
  • ISIS cropping up in their hopeful-caliphate days;
  • a CIA man who’s angling for promotion and a black-hat-turned-white-hat hacker working for him
  • …and then the drones – the Reapers and Predators conducting covert military killings from the skies of Afghanistan – start tumbling from the skies.
The blurb on the back of the book reads:

Caught between the US drone attacks and the Taliban, a brother and sister set out on the refugee trail for Europe, fleeing their Afghan mountain village for a new life. Meanwhile a UK detective with secrets and a background in undercover work arrives in Berlin to help stem the wave of Islamist terror attacks that is spreading relentlessly across Europe. In the US, the CIA are coming to terms with the fact that their military drones are being hacked and brought down one by one, and that they are helpless to stop it. When ISIS are thrown into the mix, allies become enemies and enemies allies, until things come to a head on the streets of Berlin.

Oh yes, and there’s a car chase somewhere in there too.

Have I whet your appetite? I do hope so.

The Kindle version of the book is OUT TODAY.

The paperback version will follow a week or two after publication of the Kindle version. Knock yourself out (and I mean that in the best possible way).

If you promise that you’ll write a review on the Amazon page of my book, I’ll send you a free reviewer’s copy in PDF, epub or mobi format. And I’d love you to do that! Just write to me at noel@indieberlin.de

CLICK HERE TO GO TO THE DOWNING OF THE DRONES AMAZON PAGE

Sometimes things just work out.

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