A NEW thriller written by a former Argus journalist will be released on April 15 – marking the 35th anniversary of the US air strikes on Tripoli.
Collateral Damage, written by Steve Howell, is set a year after the air strikes which killed 37 civilians in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi and focuses on regime-change wars, the Palestinian struggle for justice and state intervention in democratic movements.
Steve Howell
It follows four different points of view as central character Ayesha Khoury, a Palestinian woman living in London after traumatic events in Beirut a few years prior, searches for the truth of what happened to her partner Tom Carver – a journalist found dead on a beach in Tripoli where he had been attending a peace conference. She refuses to accept that it was an accident and her search for the truth leads to conflict with the British state.
Mr Howell used personal experience of visiting Tripoli in 1987 as a British peace movement representative. While there, Christoph Lehmann-Halens – a Canadian journalist – was found dead after apparently falling from the roof of the building where the visitors were staying.
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He said: “The death of Lehmann-Halens is still a mystery, but I am not attempting to offer an explanation of it. While that visit and his death informed and influenced Collateral Damage, the story of Ayesha’s battle to discover the real reason for Tom’s death is entirely fictional and draws from a wide range of sources.”
Collateral Damage will be published in paperback at £8.99 and on Kindle for £3.99. It will be distributed by the Books Council for Wales. Copies, including signed ones, can be pre-ordered through Mr Howell’s website www.steve-howell.com
Mr Howell currently lives in Mid Wales and has spent three decades working as a journalist and communications consultant in South Wales. Before he became a journalist, he was the secretary of the UK Local Authorities Against Apartheid (1986-1991).
His first novel was published in 2015.
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