Some crimes are committed to hide the truth. Others are committed to see who comes looking for it. Detective Jim Axel knows darkness. A former soldier carrying scars from a life he has never completely left behind, Axel has learned to trust instinct, even when following it means crossing lines other detectives won't. When a murder investigation begins exposing connections across Nottinghamshire, Axel and his partner George find themselves following a trail that refuses to behave like an ordinary criminal investigation. A missing woman. Industrial sites hiding more than their paperwork suggests. A man named Kane who always seems to know where the investigation is heading. And information disappearing from places that should have been secure. Then the evidence begins to reveal something far more disturbing. Somebody has been collecting data on the systems that keep an entire city alive, transport, power, communications, emergency response and combining it into something capable of understanding not simply where Nottinghamshire is vulnerable, but what happens when pressure is applied. Axel has spent his career hunting people. This time, he may be hunting a system. And somewhere behind it, someone is watching him back. Set against the streets, rivers, abandoned industrial sites and dark countryside of Nottinghamshire, AXEL: Dead Beneath the Surface is a gritty British crime thriller combining murder investigation, psychological suspense, action and conspiracy. The investigation starts with a body. What Axel uncovers beneath it is only the beginning.
