The Boy on the Train - by Martin Goodman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Silently, digitally, a boy takes apart your family

Tom's a regular teenager - sullen, anxious, super-smart, feeling safe within his bedroom and wedded to his screen.

On a packed train, a London commodities trader gets under his skin.

The trader's got a fine wife, two kids, a yappy dog, big house, annual bonus. Tom hacks him. The trader's hardware becomes stuffed with dangerous, damaging images. Call it collateral damage.

Hacking is what Tom does. He's got control of the keyboards of key players in the fossil fuel industry. If he doesn't bring down the grid, who will?

Roads and trainlines lead the main players to a violent confrontation in the brutalist surrounds of London's Barbican Centre. Government agents work to prevent a global blackout. Tom's set to save the planet.

Who will win?

Review Quotes

"Sinuously written, subtly subversive: a love song to our whirling, chilling, digital world. Will keep you on the edge of your (train) seat long after you've missed your stop..." -- Beatrice Hitchman, author of All of You Every Single One

More Praise for Martin Goodman

"Goodman writes with flare and panache, and the narrative fizzes along. Goodman's novel soars." -- The Times on On Bended Knees

"Heralds a new dawn for British writing." -- Daily Post on On Bended Knees

"Beautifully structured and has a distinctive and haunting tone. Altogether a very clever and memorable piece of work." -- Simon Mawer (The Glass Room) on The Cellist of Dachau

"A magical mystery tour in humility, truth, death, betrayal, forgiveness, the envelopment of nature, written as clearly and powerfully as a French Pyrenees river." -- Karla Kuban (Marchlands) on I Was Carlos Castaneda

"A treat to read - a gripping, uncanny, gothic adventure." -- Clive Bloom (Gothic Horror) on Forever Konrad

"It combines psychology at its darkest with a genuine sense of the uncanny - a powerful and disturbing experience." -- Ramsey Campbell on Forever Konrad

"A great book about how to save the planet" -- Coldplay on Client Earth

"The book is inspirational in a hardheaded, let's go to work-and-get-real-results sort of way ... There's a global vision. It's quietly amazing." -- Oxford Today on Client Earth

"Goodman's attention to detail often combines with verbal felicity to memorialize even the most ordinary moments. Powerful and affecting work." -- Paul Russell (Immaculate Blue) on Lessons from Cruising

"Such narrow, narrow confines we live in. Every so often, one of us primates escapes these dimensions, as Martin Goodman did. All we can do is rattle the bars and look after him as he runs into the hills. We wait for his letters home." -- The Los Angeles Times on I Was Carlos Castaneda

"Extraordinary - An important, aching, artful novel." -- The Toronto Star on The Cellist of Dachau