The whistleblower cuts a lonely figure. Disruptive by definition, the whistleblower is the ultimate outsider – a shadowy player who ignores not only the rules, but the very team itself.
The whistleblower’s motivations are often misunderstood, and their habit of exposing difficult truths means they are easily smeared by their detractors as troublemakers, fantasists and traitors.
All of these qualities make the whistleblower an excellent character in crime fiction.
My novel, The Messenger, follows the journey of Alex, a young man who has just been released on parole for the crime of killing his father. Alex claims he was wrongly convicted, is desperate to prove his innocence and to find his father’s real killer. Eddy, his father, was an investigative journalist in Paris, where the novel is set, and in his quest to reveal the truth about Eddy’s murder, Alex uncovers secrets his father died trying to expose.
As Alex investigates Eddy’s death, he discovers a ring of corruption with a stranglehold on the city, a conspiracy whose deep roots are entwined in the civil unrest Paris is famous for. As the novel progresses, Alex draws close to Eddy’s enemies and comes to know his father in a way he never did when he was alive.
Like his father before him, the more Alex uncovers, the more isolated he becomes, and the more he is pursued for what he knows.
The novel has as its focus the insidious pull of corruption: how it drags people into its orbit whether they choose to get involved or...
Images of the Whitegate fuel protests earlier this month were altered to make it appear gardaí were violent towards protesters. The AI-doctored images were shared widely online, including by inter...