As Adrian has said in the past, one of, if not the, most exciting aspect of this work we do at Hobeck is announcing a new writer to the world. It is with great pleasure, therefore, that I get to do this today, for the fourth time since we decided to publish books.
We have known about our fourth signing, Lewis Hastings, for a few months now and we’ve had to keep quiet all that time. Secrets can be quite hard to keep. But the veil of silence has finally been lifted and we can now spill. At least, we can spill a little bit of what we know.
Lewis and I first came across each other (not literally) one morning in Tesco carpark during the early weeks of lockdown. At the time, as we exchanged messages on Twitter, little did we all realise that this was the start of a working relationship that was to become something quite wonderful. Serendipity had struck us a second time (the first time being the wonderful Mr Daws).
As we came to find out, Lewis Hastings is a pseudonym. His real name is far more, real. Who is he really? We cannot tell you. We'd have to erase you if we did. Born as a product of the long, harsh and miserable winter of the early 1960s in southern England he initially shot to fame for his child acting, embellishment and love of justice and propensity for injury. His catalogue of injuries and their research proved to be of use in his writing and working career. For adult Lewis, a job in law enforcement was a logical path, having drifted helplessly on a sinking rudderless ship that saw him involved in many diverse occupations, including but not limited to selling, border security, exotic dancing, prostitution and people trafficking*.
Having spent his formative years both living and working in the United Kingdom he was later offered what for many would be the chance of a lifetime. Clutching his worldly goods, his family and his reputation he took the leap of faith and now lives on the other side of the world in a house, with the same wife and a lake-loving Labrador.
How he has had time to write four superb thrillers while working in his current occupation we aren’t sure. But we are very grateful he did. All of Lewis’s thrillers feature John 'Jack' Cade, a former British police officer who is now using his skills internationally. The brilliant Seventh Wave trilogy pits Cade against an international conspiracy that leads back to the heart of British government, and pushes Cade and his team to their limits and beyond. And in his new novel, The Angel of Whitehall, Cade is drawn back to London once more to fight corruption at the heart of government, as he unearths a long-established people trafficking operation with links to illegal diamond smuggling. Can Cade protect the former naval officer who is the last living clue to unravelling this dark conspiracy, or will he be thwarted by the shadowy forces that want Cade's contact silenced?
Through Lewis, we as Hobeck are bringing four gripping novels you won't be able to put down. We were both Lewis fans from the first sentence of his submission (in fact Adrian was up until the small hours reading The Angel of Whitehall and I was kept in a rapidly cooling bath of water with the first of the trilogy novels). We know that our readers are going to fall in love with his writing just as we have.
We thought we had been working hard thus far, we realise that that is nothing to what the next few months will hold for us. Do we mind? Not one bit.
*Lewis was never involved in selling.