Mark Aton

Anglo-African Crime Fiction is the new Noir! Introducing Mark Hawkhaw, a throwback to the hardboiled days of Marlowe but with a modern, racy twist.

The protagonist is a private eye, Mark Hawkshaw, who straddles two worlds: Africa and England. Hawkshaw, who describes himself as African-English, is set the task of finding a missing teenager, a task that leads him from the seedy underworld of East London and stately homes of Essex, to the townships and shanty towns and mountains of South Africa.

The story starts with a muti-killing of a young boy in South Africa. The two perpetrators develop into very successful, powerful criminals and eventually are contracted by a seemingly affluent and respectable family in London to perform an outrageous fraud involving the son of a divorced couple.

When Hawkshaw is contracted by the mother of the boy to find her missing son he is not supposed to succeed. He is hired to create the illusion that the family are ‘doing the right thing’ but as he draws closer to the truth they become anxious and he finds himself battling on two fronts to finish the job. His old benefactor also has a task for him that dovetails nicely with his main job and reaffirms his faith, such that it was, in humanity.

The story moves from London to South Africa and back and in true hard-boiled fashion Hawkshaw is still standing at the end albeit a little battered and bruised.