I want to personally tell you that on October 4th the novel I am more excited about than anything I’ve ever written, ABSOLUTE PROOF, will be published. I’ve been researching and working on it for an almost unbelievable 30 years!
Like my Roy Grace novels, the book is fast-paced and twisty, an international thriller that moves between the UK, America, Egypt and Greece. The central character, Ross Hunter is an investigative journalist — a role very similar to that of a detective, and an early part of the book mirrors something, very closely, that happened to me in 1989, when I had a phone call one afternoon, out of the blue from an elderly sounding gentleman.
He assured me he was “not a crank”, he had been a decorated RAF pilot during the War and was a retired academic. He had been given absolute proof of God’s existence and had been told by a representative of God that the author Peter James was the person to help him get taken seriously.
The notion of what it would take to have conclusive proof intrigued me and I went to see a modern-thinking Bishop friend. He told me that for most religious people of all denominations, proof is the enemy of faith and if someone credible claimed to have proof they would most likely be assassinated — because whose God would it be? There would be divisions within all the belief systems, as well as the leaders of predominately atheist countries who would not like a higher power usurping their authority.
That was my lightbulb moment! I knew then and there I had the potential within this story for a terrific thriller, one that readers could not only enjoy purely as a white-knuckle ride, but also in which there would be opportunities to explore the biggest question for all mankind…
ABSOLUTE PROOF will be published globally on October 4th and as an additional thrill for me the audio book is read by the wonderful Hugh Bonneville.
