Whatever Gets You Through the Night

Book excerpt: 'Hugely entertaining' Sunday Times 'A perfect read' The Guardian 'Terrific' The i Most people travel to Corfu to escape the real world for a couple of weeks and embrace the fantasy of olive trees, sandy beaches, and little fishing boats bobbing on sparkling blue water under a warm sun. But not McIntyre. McIntyre's a fixer, specialising in getting people out of places they don't want to be with the minimum of fuss, publicity and violence. The job in Corfu should be easy - spring, Lauren, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, from the luxury compound of the tech billionaire, Julian Hepworth. Hepworth's young, handsome and charismatic - he's also a suspected paedophile, who, under the guise of training a girls' tennis team, has set up an abusive cult. But as McIntyre sets up his operation in the exclusive north eastern corner of the island, things quickly start to slip out of his control. First, Lauren's father turns up, threatening to give the game away, and soon, McIntyre's having to contend with Albanian gangsters, Greek drug dealers, psychotic bodyguards, flat earthers and spoilt, wealthy teenagers looking for dangerous kicks. To further complicate things, Lauren's planning her own 'jailbreak'. It looks like things are going to be a lot harder than McIntyre's used to. Luckily, he has his team around him, a motley and colourful bunch, each with their own speciality. The intertwined stories come together as the various characters all converge on a glamorous summer party at Hepworth's spectacular villa. Can McIntyre play the different factions off against each other and get Lauren to safety without things going horribly wrong? Whatever Gets You Through The Night is a crime novel with a thrillingly dark heart about the truths that lurk beneath the picture post card surface of a sunny Mediterranean idyll. Praise for Whatever Gets You Through the Night: 'Charlie Higson coming back to the world of adult thrillers is a major event. And what a comeback. Higson's new thriller will certainly get you through the night, though you may not get a lot of sleep...' Mark Billingham 'A hugely enjoyable sun-soaked thriller: hard-edged but warm, tense but funny, vividly ultra-modern and yet deliciously old-fashioned' Christopher Brookmyre