Zenith

George Bracke is returning from an international security conference in Berlin when strange messages begin appearing on his private phone.

Watch your step.
The world is in danger.

At first, George is inclined to dismiss them as the work of a crank. But hardly anyone knows his private number — and the messages keep coming.

Meanwhile, Ghent is facing crises of its own. A corruption scandal threatens to shake the police force to its foundations, former detective André Cornelis is being terrorised by an unknown enemy, and Commissioner Abdel Hassim is struggling to return to duty after a serious accident.

Far away from police headquarters, another man is fighting a very different battle. Bruno lives alone with his animals and a mind filled with visions, sounds and inexplicable flashes of light. He has learned not to trust everything he sees or hears. Yet one conviction grows stronger by the day: something terrible is about to happen, and somehow he is supposed to stop it.

Then Berlin is struck.

A coordinated series of attacks leaves the city in chaos and sends security services across Europe into overdrive. George Bracke is drawn into the international hunt for the surviving attackers, following a trail that crosses borders and reaches into extremist networks operating far beyond Germany.

But while the police search for terrorists using intelligence, surveillance and forensic evidence, the mysterious messages continue to reach George.

And Bruno is already moving towards the same danger for reasons nobody — perhaps not even Bruno himself — can explain.

From Ghent and Berlin to North Africa, Zenith is a tense international crime thriller about terrorism, radicalisation, corruption, loyalty and the uncomfortable border between intuition and the inexplicable.

Zenith is Book Nine in the George Bracke Thrillers, following Botero, Tango Mortale, Cold Fire, Kismet, Heavy Water, The Malt Mystery, And Then Nothing More and Boomerang.

About the author
Stefaan Van Laere is a Belgian author, journalist and publisher. His books have appeared in Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Italian. Through Partizaan Publishers, his work increasingly reaches an international readership in both fiction and non-fiction. The George Bracke Thrillers combine European crime fiction with police investigation, international intrigue and the personal lives of a recurring cast of characters.