The second novel featuring Nicholas Newman, who first appeared in 'The Amethysts'.
It is lunchtime for the powerful. Architect Nicholas Newman, affluent, successful, but emotionally unresolved, waits for his friend Antony - who never arrives. Instead a courier brings a package containing a knife. An hour later Newman meets his new client, the brilliant Black Pearl, Dutch international footballer and Premiership star. In the interlacing connections that emerge and mystify, nothing will ever be again as it seems.
'Pearl' is a stunning story of the past rising to dictate the present and control the future. The horrors of a violent death drag Newman back to a Nazi atrocity in France. Soon the links into football hooliganism and neo-Nazi thuggery rip his life open.
The huge moral pressure that underpinned Newman's first appearance in 'The Amethysts' coerces him again - and will until he confronts his own weakness. When he acknowledges his selfishness he becomes a saviour. Thus, horrendous evil is addressed and defeated and at last Newman begins to feel the emotions that have eluded him - love and affection.