Harriet Keel
A detective who sees the person behind the evidence. Kind, stubborn and unimpressed by institutional excuses.
BOOK ONE · A HARRIET KEEL THRILLER
Two
Shadows.
Two people watch.
One woman fights back.
Your watch knows when you sleep. Your phone knows where you go. Someone else knows exactly what will make you break.
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DUNDEE · LONDON · BEIJINGCRIME · ESPIONAGE · DRY HUMOUR
TRY THE FIRST BOOK
Meet Harriet.
Hear the shadows.
Start with Two Shadows. Read the opening, or hear the actual audiobook narration before you choose.
TWO SHADOWS · AUDIOBOOK
Someone is listening.
Now it’s your turn.
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Get the full audiobook ↗THE STORY
They know his life.
They can use it.
Daniel Reeve thinks he has found someone who understands him. He has found someone who has been studying him.
A bank employee with a routine, a marriage and a quiet life, Daniel has no idea that two intelligence officers in Beijing can read his days through the devices he trusts. His loneliness, his worries, his smallest habits: all of it can be turned into leverage.
When surveillance becomes financial exploitation, DCI Harriet Keel is handed a frightened man and a story that should be impossible. She listens. Then she starts asking the questions nobody wants answered.
With brilliant, infuriating cryptanalyst Hamish MacNair beside her, Harriet follows the money from a London interview room to Dundee’s waterfront—and towards something buried beneath the Law. The evidence is intimate. The machinery is vast. And the people holding the files may be as dangerous as the people watching.
In Beijing, Mei and Jun are discovering that their orders conceal more than they explain. As the investigation closes in, loyalty becomes a dangerous question: who is worth protecting when the system you serve has already decided their price?
Sharp, cinematic and threaded with dry British humour, Two Shadows brings surveillance down to its most human scale: one life, one vulnerability, one decision to fight back.
Start reading on AmazonYour first encounter with Harriet Keel. No previous books required.
READ THE OPENING
Two shadows.
One ordinary life.
Read the complete prologue free on the website. About 6 minutes, with no sign-up needed.
PROLOGUE
Beijing, eighteen months earlier.
At 2:03 in the afternoon, Daniel Reeve brushed his teeth in Walthamstow and Mei Lin watched his stress level rise.
She did not have a camera in his bathroom. Cameras were crude. Cameras created evidence.
She had his watch.
INSIDE TWO SHADOWS
Quiet questions.
Violent consequences.
Six moments from the story, illustrated in the style of the cover. Select an image to see the scene in detail.
01 · LONDON
The Custard Room
Daniel’s account sounds absurd. Harriet knows fear when she sees it. One question about an ordinary household device opens a door neither of them can close.
02 · BEIJING
The Watchers
Mei sees patterns. Jun sees people. Between them, Daniel has very few secrets left. But even the watchers cannot see who is using what they find.
03 · DUNDEE
Danger at Discovery
A discreet meeting. A historic ship. Two men who have stopped pretending to be visitors. On the Tay waterfront, an investigation becomes a fight to survive.
04 · DUNDEE
The Chase up the Law
A borrowed yellow Focus. A pursuing Range Rover. Hamish’s directions arrive slightly ahead of the road. Harriet has other things to worry about.
05 · BENEATH DUNDEE LAW
Under the Volcano
Old radio equipment. New cables. A notebook that should have stayed in the past. Beneath the hill, the investigation reaches a room where nobody can afford an easy assumption.
06 · LONDON
The Long Way Home
Rain, glass and a river with very little sympathy. When the screens stop telling the truth, Harriet has to follow the person running in front of her.
THE PEOPLE AT THE CENTRE
Four minds.
No easy loyalties.
Human warmth, awkward alliances and a sense of humour under pressure.
Hamish MacNair
A brilliant cryptanalyst with a gift for patterns, a very literal mind and an unfortunate habit of being right.
Mei Lin
An intelligence officer whose precision cannot quite silence her conscience.
Jun Wei
Mei’s oldest ally. An improviser who reads people beautifully and occasionally misjudges the furniture.
YOUR FIRST HARRIET KEEL THRILLER
Enter the shadows.
Explore the front and back covers, then read on Amazon or listen on Audible.
BY CHRIS HUGHES
Somebody is always listening.
Harriet is starting to listen back.
Discover the book that introduces Harriet, Hamish, Mei and Jun—and the world that brings them together.
Read the book on Amazon or enjoy the audiobook on Audible.
Explore the rest of the series ↗THE HARRIET KEEL READER CLUB
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WHAT WOULD YOU LOVE TO HAPPEN?
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