“A gripping read, I enjoyed it very much.” Jill Paton Walsh, Booker Prize shortlisted author of Knowledge of Angels.

How much loyalty does a mother owe to her son? And how does a doctor choose between faith and her science?

Christine Garrett is investigating an unusual malaria outbreak on the south coast of England. As she threads the connections between the dead, she discovers links to her son and the charismatic leader he follows. In finding the source of the spreading plague, she is forced to decide between her old faith and the reason that has brought her to a lightless place.

Frightening, gripping and with unexpected twists, The Pattern Maker is a timely story of the dangers that arise when ideals, technology and human talents are perverted by absolute belief. It explores the human cost when people are seen as means not ends, asking questions with no easy answers.

She has lost her son. Then three unusual deaths mark a trail that only she can follow...

Author's short technical note: One emergent theme of the novel is the relationship between coding and the encoding of life. In the final confrontation, the protagonist must write a program against a countdown to disaster. Given the hardware and appplication, the language would probably be C although it could well be any that support regular expressions: Java, C++, C#, Objective C, PHP, Python, Ruby, Javascript, VB.NET, Swift, Perl, Actionscript, Scala, Delphi, F#... even SQL.

Suggestions for the actual program are welcome (the code must be able to be written at speed and run fast)!