Trapeze has acquired Witness X, an “addictive page-turner” of a sci-fi thriller by S E Moorhead.

Sam Eades, editorial director at Trapeze, acquired world rights (all languages) in a one-book deal struck with Nelle Andrews at PFD. The publisher says it will be “a key title” for Orion at the London Book Fair.
The book’s plot centres on the hunt for a notorious serial killer who abducted and butchered two victims every February. Thought to have been jailed by police 14 years ago, when a body is discovered and a second person is reported missing they realise the real killer is still out there – and neuropsychologist Kyra Sullivan, a police psychologist on the original investigation, fights to use a new technology that accesses the minds of the original witnesses.

Eades said: “For fans of ‘Black Mirror’, ‘Mindhunter’ and ‘Altered Carbon’, Witness X is a genre-bending thriller in which our hero Kyra must face her past in order to save her future. S E Moorhead explores themes of truth and memory in an addictive page-turner that will keep you reading late into the night.”

Moorhead, from Liverpool, said: “I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of ‘truth’ and how memory and denial can bend and curve the facts. In Witness X Kyra offers to investigate witnesses’ memories because it seems to be the only way to can catch a killer and save a life. But her desire to know the truth to help others is balanced against the devastating effects that knowing the truth will have on her.”

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