The Abrupt Physics of Dying

By Paul E. Hardisty

When he is hijacked by Islamic terrorists, an oil company engineer is forced to investigate a mysterious illness afflicting a small Yemen village … with shocking results. A stunning debut thriller and first in the addictive, eye-opening Claymore Straker series.

***Shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger***
***Book of the Year in the TELEGRAPH***

'Just occasionally, a book comes along to restore your faith in a genre and Paul Hardisty's The Abrupt Physics of Dying does this in spades' The Times

‘A stormer of a thriller – vividly written, utterly topical, totally gripping' Peter James

‘Remarkably well-written and sophisticated’ Literary Review

‘A page-turning adventure that grabs you from the first page and won’t let go’ Edward Wilson

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One man. An oil company. A decision that could cost his life.

Claymore Straker is trying to forget a violent past. Working as an oil company engineer in the wilds of Yemen, he is hijacked at gunpoint by Islamic terrorists. Clay has a choice: help uncover the cause of a mysterious sickness afflicting the village of Al Urush, close to the company’s oil-processing facility, or watch Abdulkader, his driver and close friend, die.

As the country descends into civil war and village children start dying, Clay finds himself caught up in a ruthless struggle between opposing armies, controllers of the country’s oil wealth, Yemen’s shadowy secret service, and rival terrorist factions.

As Clay scrambles to keep his friend alive, he meets Rania, a troubled journalist. Together, they try to uncover the truth about Al Urush. But nothing in this ancient, unforgiving place is as it seems. Accused of a murder he did not commit, put on the CIA’s most-wanted list, Clay must come to terms with his past and confront the powerful forces that want him dead.

A stunning debut eco-thriller, The Abrupt Physics of Dying will not only open your eyes, but keep them glued to the page until the final, stunning denouement is reached.

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‘Trenchant and engaging’ Stav Sherez, Catholic Herald

‘A solid, meaty thriller – Hardisty is a fine writer and Straker is a great lead character’ Lee Child

‘Full of thrills, spills and moral indignation … an outstanding debut’ Jake Kerridge, Telegraph

‘Fast-paced and cleverly written, this novel has bestseller written all over it’ West Australian

‘An exceptional debut, beautifully written, blisteringly authentic, heartstoppingly tense and unusually moving. Definite award material' Paul Johnston

‘A thriller of the highest quality, with the potential to one day stand in the company of such luminaries as Bond and Bourne’ Live Many Lives

‘A big, powerful, sophisticated and page-turning thriller – thought-provoking and prescient' Eve Seymour

'A forceful first novel by a writer not afraid of weighty issues and visibly in love with the beauty of the Yemen and desert landscapes his protagonists travel through’ Maxim Jakubowski

‘Searing … at times achieves the level of genuine poetry’ Publishers Weekly STARRED review

‘A fast-paced action thriller, beautifully written’ Tim Marshall, author of Prisoners of Geography

• Language: English
• Publisher: ORENDA BOOKS
• Release date: Dec 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781910633069

Paul E. Hardisty

Canadian Paul E Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The first four novels in his Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution all received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Telegraph Thriller of the Year. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.

Reviews for The Abrupt Physics of Dying

[atticusfinch1048 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Abrupt Physics of Dying – Stunning Debut ThrillerThe Abrupt Physics of Dying is the stunning debut thriller from Canadian writer Paul E. Hardisty the debut book for new publisher Orenda Books. Orenda Books is on a winner with this excellent thriller, the name may seem long and off putting but like the publisher it is not as daunting as it seems. This is a well written pulsating read diving head long in to the dangerous world of Middle Eastern Politics, religion, oil and western oil companies. From the beginning to the end you are left wondering on who can be trusted to tell the truth and will the corruption that seems endemic be able to block the truth ever coming out.Claymore Straker is an ex-South African paratrooper who is trying to escape his violent past who is now working as an engineer in the petroleum industry out in the dangerous lands of Yemen. Straker and his driver Abdulkader are kidnapped at gun point and taken to meet Al Shams, according to the government a terrorist. Straker is told that is he wants to save Abdulkader’s life then he needs to find out what is causing the mysterious illness that is affecting the village of Al Urush slowly killing the children and women.As Straker starts his investigations to find what is causing the illnesses he finds himself caught between the ruthlessness of the Petroleum Company, the various factions of Yemenis and their various armies and those who control the oil. As Yemen descends in to civil war the more dangerous it becomes for Straker, the closer he gets to the truth the more at risk he becomes. He finds himself branded a murderer and is wanted by the CIA and wanted dead by his former colleagues at the Petroleum Company.As Straker collects the evidence and sees the villagers die he knows that many lives depend on him and what he discovers. He also realises that it will be a race against time and the company to get the truth out and that he will expose himself and those around him to a certain death. What he does learn is nothing is what it seems and that Yemen and the Middle East is an ancient and unforgiving place a place he is not sure he can escape and tell people what is happening there.This is an exceptional debut thriller that is well written the prose clear and crisp the voice is clear and authentic, which is tense, moving and grabs you by the throat. This really is a page turning thriller that at the same time is thought provoking and challenges our love and need for oil. The Abrupt Physics of Dying also introduces to a new hero in Claymore Straker who we are promised will return and will be interesting to see how this character develops and can he challenge Bond and Bourne.The Abrupt Physics of Dying by Paul E. Hardisty is a fantastic debut thriller that will blow your socks off with a traffic pace that you will not regret reading. Claymore Straker is an intelligent ex-soldier fighting demons who will become our new hero.

[texasbooklover · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Abrupt Physics of Dying By Paul E. HardistyOrenda Books978-1910633052£8.99, 429 pagesThe Abrupt Physics of Dying wastes no time. The debut thriller from Paul E. Hardisty, the first in a planned series, opens on page one with Kalashnikovs, kidnapping and grand theft auto. Our hero Claymore Straker has an appropriately shady past but is currently a hydrologist for Petro-Tex, an international oil company, where he is responsible for environmental impact. See? Dangerous territory already, even before the men with the guns show up. Straker finds himself in the middle of a lethal feud between the tribes, the Yemeni government and global business interests (aka money). When the Bedouin begin to fall ill, a shadowing sheik by the name of Al Shams recruits (aka blackmails) Straker to get to the truth of the matter at the unholy confluence of oil and water.Straker reminds me of the Downey version of Sherlock Holmes crossed with Erin Brockovich. He visualizes beforehand what he needs to do in the action sequences; he’s smart, unconventional and a bit of a smart ass. Abrupt Physics is not your average thriller. There’s history and a good deal of philosophy, the modern tension between religion and the secular, between the Arab tribes,“The company,’ spat Al Shams. ‘Petro-Tex. You speak as if this thing were human, one of Allah’s creations. It is not. It is inanimate, soulless, not of this world. It exists for one purpose only, as we both know…To get the oil that lies beneath this land. Our land. It will do anything to get it. It will pay people like you whatever it must to placate the villagers, to assuage the regulators.”and Petro-Tex, as well as Straker himself,“Clay forced a laugh, coughed, looked across the fire at Abdulkader. The man’s stoic fatalism – that granitic belief in a higher power – was something he had never understood. Empirically, it made no sense. Observation denied it. And yet envy flooded through him now, raw, thirsty, an insatiable dark negative that seemed to pull in everything around him, leaving him standing alone and naked, the last torn strips of his logic hanging like rags from his frame.”Hardisty’s descriptions of the Empty Quarter are well- and closely observed.“The wadi cut down through the plateau of softer rocks, shales and marls, down to the hard limestone that formed the base of the first scarp...The wadi sides steepened...the stratified, fractured face of time where a hundred millennia, the whole of human history, lay compressed into a single layer – a hand span’s width of lithified sand grains, quartz and plagioclase from a beach on a lonely stretch of coastline that once basked under clear skies, the crystalline blue of the shallows teeming with freakish new life, all now extinct.”The story and setting remind me of Taylor Stevens’ series of thrillers starring Vanessa Michael Monroe: international intrigue, sophisticated treatment of non-western cultures – which means neither demonized nor romanticized, abundant gray areas where there are no simple choices, and peopled with the sorts of psychopaths addicted to adrenaline. The science reminds me of Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta novels. All of these similarities are good things but Abrupt Physics is not derivative. This is a modern treatment of a centuries-old conflict between indigenous peoples and usurpers bent on exploitation, us and them.On the down side, some of the bad guys are stereotypes, even intermittently cartoonish, and Hardisty needs to work on his sex scenes – especially word choice. Tone down some of the melodrama and I think he’s got a good thing going on here. Since practice makes better, I’m looking forward to future installments in the series.The reluctant warrior trope is oft-used but that’s because it speaks to us. The repentant sinner who has cleaned up his act, forced by circumstances to resurrect his inner bad guy, but this time uses his powers for good. The concept doesn’t need to be original but the treatment does. And it is.