DEEP SAHARA

Leslie Croxford

A mass murder. A fugitive from justice. A long- lost father. A deadly secret.

Recovering from a nervous breakdown preceded by the death of his wife, Klaus Werner travels to the Algerian Sahara to research a book on desert insects. He is billeted in a local monastery, but upon arrival he finds it empty of its inhabitants.He soon discovers that it is a recent crime scene, the monks having been slaughtered as they went about their daily routine. Local fundamentalists are suspected, although there are whispers that agents of the state are responsible.

Urged by the police to leave the site, Klaus – exhausted, numb – finds himself electing to stay. Atrocious as the killings are, they have no connection with him. He simply wishes to get on with his work and confront his isolation in the desert.

Yet he is soon joined by other visitors: travelling hermits, a young American palaeontologist, a sinister German scientist. He discovers that there are disturbing links between them and his own life. Moreover, each of them seems to be hiding something. Even the insects he has been sent to study, all mysteriously deformed, appear to embody an awful reality …

Klaus, writing his memoirs in Rome and in the public eye, tells his story in flashbacks. Increasingly, he is forced to determine the authenticity of his intense personal quest in the deep Sahara.

Leslie Croxford is a British author and Senior Vice-President of the British University in Egypt. Born in Alexandria, he obtained a doctorate in History from Cambridge University. He has written one novel, Solomon’s Folly (Chatto & Windus), and is completing his third. He and his wife live in Cairo.

ISBN 9781911475125 – Paperback – Demy – 288 pages
 – £9.99