Overview: After learning of his wife’s affair with his best friend and business partner, divorced and unemployed MindTech entrepreneur Dr Harry Coulson arrives in the idyllic English town of Freebourne, looking to start a new life.

But any hopes of quietly picking up the pieces of his broken world are shattered when he steps off the train to discover the body of a young woman lying in the snow. It’s almost as if she’d been left there for him to find.

Harry does everything he can to help. But as a stranger arriving on the night Freebourne witnesses its first murder in over a century, he not only becomes a suspect in the woman’s killing but finds himself caught in a deadly game between science, faith, and free will — in a secret far darker and more terrifying than anything he could have imagined.

Verdict: A definitive page-turner of the highest order, Freebourne by author Salman Shaheen is one of those books that engagingly draw your curiosity from the short preface and once in, well, all bets are off as to how long you will reside within the named village and its ever encircling mystery.

Indeed, from the very off this richly written, and dutifully emboldened new novel is something that could, and should find its way into being on our TV screens sometime in the near future.

Not even close to be your average low effort, plodding procedural, moreover an engaging, and growing storyline that becomes more complex with every chapter undertaken, Freebourne may well also incorporate a few red herrings and some whodunnit guesswork for the reader to play with, but moreover it comes with an ending that I bet nobody will ever see coming!

Liberally spread with elements of modern day politics (due to Shaheen being a politician himself, of course), philosophy, religion and even chunks of science, in short, Freebourne is an absolutely gripping gem of a murder mystery, complete with veins of sci-fi, all coming together to showcase a well told story within a setting that one can easily close their eyes and imagine being within themselves.

About the Author - Salman Shaheen is a British politician, journalist and novelist. He has written for the Guardian, New Statesman, New Internationalist, and Times of India, and frequently comments on politics and economics on TV and radio. His exclusive exposes on corporate tax avoidance have made front-page news in the Observer and have been picked up by the FT and the Telegraph.

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