Marking the centenary of Desmond Bagley’s birth (see Domino Island, below), publishers HarperCollins have commissioned an original new novel featuring the same protagonist, Bill Kemp. Entitled Outback, it's due for UK publication in hardback, ebook and audiobook on May 11, 2023, with foreign and paperback editions following later.

In a story created and written by yours truly, Kemp faces new foes and new dangers in the remote Australian interior. Here's what they have to say about it:

Insurance investigator Bill Kemp had never wanted to trek deep into Australia’s remote interior. But when his clients Sophie and Adam Church inherit an abandoned opal mine, triggering some explosive long-lost secrets, they – and Kemp – find themselves facing an unknown enemy even more deadly than the vast, forbidding wilderness of the outback…

The Desmond Bagley centenary novel honours the legacy of the bestselling thriller writer with a new adventure featuring Bill Kemp, described by Jeffrey Deaver as ‘part James Bond, part Philip Marlowe, and all hero’. Writer Michael Davies, who completed the first Kemp novel Domino Island for publication nearly 40 years after the author’s death, now weaves an original tale of danger and death under the blistering Australian sun.