The Boy on the Train

"Sinuously written, subtly subversive" - Beatrice Hitchman

Silently, digitally, a boy takes apart your family

A gripping techno-thriller that fuses Patricia Highsmith's psychological intensity with urgent climate activism. When teenage hacker Tom Snelling encounters coal broker Steve McInnes on a train, a chance collision sparks a devastating game of digital cat-and-mouse. Tom, a reclusive coding prodigy driven by eco-fury, systematically dismantles Steve's life—planting child pornography, triggering financial chaos, and exposing the moral rot beneath corporate respectability. But Tom is being watched by Mel, a gender-fluid intelligence operative, while MI5's shadowy "Glyph" operation secretly manipulates them both. As Tom's algorithms threaten to collapse the global fossil fuel industry, the question becomes: can one brilliant, damaged boy save the planet by burning down the system—or will his digital vengeance consume everything, including himself?