Author

D. G. Hall

Contemporary thrillers. Ordinary lives. Unordinary consequences.

A laptop booked in for repair. A domain nobody renewed. In both cases somebody ordinary reads what is on it and cannot put it back.

Explore the books About the author

The books

Two novels

A laptop booked in for repair, and a web address nobody renewed.

A dim repair workshop at night. A closed laptop with a handwritten repair tag glows on a workbench under an anglepoise lamp, beside a mug of tea. Shelves of identical laptops line the wall behind, and a dog sleeps in a basket.

Featured — forthcoming

Ticket Closed

A technician finds state secrets on a laptop booked in for repair.

Dave Fox fixes computers for a managed service provider in Berkshire. He has been passed over for promotion twice. The Dell Latitude on his bench belongs to a digital forensics firm that works under contract to the police, and it should have been a drive swap and a closed ticket.

What is on it cannot be handed back and forgotten. By the time he works out who wants it returned, they already know he has looked. Dave has spent four years being told he is not management material by people who have never once checked what the system logs.

  • Comic crime
  • Technology
  • British

For readers of Mick Herron and Chris Brookmyre.

Out soon Tell me when it's out

A model railway layout on a trestle table at night, lit by an anglepoise lamp. A figure in a postman's uniform stands on the track beside an open goods wagon heaped with envelopes, with a station building and a red signal behind.

In edit

Dead Domain

Brian Cobb buys a cheap expired domain for his model railway club and points a catch-all mailbox at it. The mail that arrives belongs to a company that files nil accounts every year and moves six figures a month. He keeps trying to do the right thing with the post. The right thing keeps getting worse.

  • Comic crime
  • Fraud
  • British

For readers of Richard Osman and Janice Hallett.

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About

About the author

D. G. Hall writes thrillers set in Berkshire and Oxfordshire: industrial estates, branch-line stations, the back office of a small firm on a wet Tuesday. The crimes are fraud and the misuse of systems nobody thinks to check. The people who uncover them are usually the ones holding the paperwork.

The technology is accurate because it is the author's job. There are no genius hackers and no improbable screens. What the characters do, a careful amateur with a manual could do. When the threat turns up it is generally a phone call from somebody being very pleasant indeed.

The writing

What these books are about

Four things that turn up in all of them.

Nobody is a mastermind

The damage gets done by processes working as designed. A ticket is closed. A renewal lapses. A form is filed and accepted by somebody who has filed four hundred like it that month.

The person who notices is never in charge

Technicians, postmen, clerks. People who have handled enough of the ordinary traffic to spot the piece of it that is wrong, and who get told they are imagining things.

The frightening people are polite

An offer well over the odds. A caller who already knows your shift pattern. A solicitor's letter, scanned and attached, impeccably worded, signed by a man with a conservatory.

Nothing explodes

Jobs end. People stop ringing. A name gets attached to a company and stays attached to it.

Contact

Get in touch

Review copies, rights and festival enquiries. Or ask to be told when a book comes out. That list sends about twice a year.

Prefer email? books@dghall.co.uk