William Carver is an old hack. As a long-time radio journalist, he has seen almost everything but still has a nose for a good story. He finds himself in Egypt in the middle of the Arab Spring and stumbles across facts which the authorities, both in Egypt and in the UK, would preferably not be made public knowledge and would go to extreme lengths to prevent Carver from broadcasting his findings. It's an extraordinarily well-written book. Carver is almost an anti-hero as he carries so much baggage around with him from previous assignments. However, the reader can't fail to become attached to him as he is on the side of the underdog and has a conscience, which is something so often lacking in politicians and those who wield power. There are numerous subplots, and it was intriguing trying to determine how they were all going to link up in the end. Some were more obvious than others, but the story of the two brothers being taken by people traffickers from Eritrea to Europe could have been a stand-alone story. The description "page-turner" tends to be overused in reviews, but the pace of the plot encourages the reader to keep going well into the small hours of the morning. Carver seems to almost always play to his weaknesses rather than his strengths, but that makes him more attractive as a personality. Certainly, his shortcomings are many and varied, but in him, we can often see a reflection of ourselves. The main attraction for this reviewer was the atmospheric feel for Cairo, which may have been helped by the fact that I have just returned from Egypt. It's a country of enormous contrasts, and this was superbly reflected in Hanington’s writing. I shall now be seeking out "A Dying Breed" which was the first book to feature William Carver. A first-rate read. mr zorg Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Those who have read my review of “A Dying Breed” will be aware that I have known Peter Hanington for something like 30 years, since the time when we were ant-apartheid campaigners together in London in the late 1980s. I mention this again so that you can make your own decision about whether or not that has affected my judgement. Peter went on to work for BBC Radio, including the Today Programme. The World Tonight and Newshour. So, he is well-acquainted with the world in which he sets his books. “A Single Source” picks up on the careers of William Carver and his producer, Patrick. They are in Cairo at the time of the Arab Spring, and they, of course, are at the heart of the reporting action. I am not sure that any of Peter Hanington’s colleagues at the BBC will want to be thought of as the role model for William Carver. He is a bit of a slob, even though he is a slob with principles which is what makes him dangerous as a journalist. When he is on to a story, he is like a terrier who will not let go. The problem is that he does not care about the consequences and, quite often, he is not the one who has to take the flak. That is often done by the people around him, whether it is his boss dealing with civil servants, or others nearer to the action, dealing with the secret police. Patrick is, in my view, a far more likeable character. Like Carver, he takes risks to get the story. But the person he puts at risk is himself. He is prepared to take his recording equipment, secretly, into dangerous places and puts himself on the line. Unlike Carver, he does not put others near the action, or involved in it, at risk from the secret police. Let us not forget that the Egyptian secret police under Mubarak were quite capable of torture and murder. The others near the action are Nawal, a blogger from Tahrir Square and her friend Zahra who helps Nawal by putting her blogs into good English. Both of them are very intelligent young women, putting their lives at risk to expose what is happening in Cairo during the Arab Spring. The key issue is proving that the police are using British-manufactured tear gas against the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. Nawal has the evidence. Zahra, who works at the Seti Hotel, where Carver is staying, helps her friend to contact Carver and to show him what she has discovered. That is the motor for the story. Carver digs to produce evidence confirming which British company has been involved in the illegal export of tear gas to the Mubarak government. That is when it becomes dangerous. As the story hinges on this development, I will now turn to the events in London. The company that is involved in this is called Quadrel Engineering & Defence, and its Chief Executive is named Bellquist. Some of you are going to think that he is a villain from a Victorian melodrama. You will have to trust me on this. Peter Hanington and I met enough of these kinds of people, when we gate-crashed the AGMs of companies trading with apartheid. Bellquist is an accurate enough description of a certain kind of entitlement which these people exude. They are, of course, brought up to it or they acquire that particular patina of, shall we say, ruthlessness. Quadrel, naturally, has connections with the Ministry of Defence and exerts all the pressure it can to stop Carver from telling his story. That is the second strand of the tale. The story, however, begins with Gabriel, an Eritrean businessman, buying a VIP passage for his two grandsons, Gebre and Solomon, from people traffickers because there is no hope for them having a good life in their own country. The two young men set out on a journey from hell from Asmara in Eritrea, across Ethiopia and Sudan to Omdurman and then on, across the Sahara, to Libya, where they and those with them are finally set adrift in boats across the Mediterranean. It is not until the end of the book that the link between the stories of Gebre and Solomon, on the one hand, and of Nawal and Zahra on the other becomes clear. You will not get any spoilers from me. One disappointment is that there is no hint of the role of Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service, in all this. I accept, however, that would have been a complexity too far and that there is enough meat in this story to keep any reader hooked. It took me less than a day to read through the 364 pages of this story. This was because I did not go to sleep until I had read the last page. Peter Hanington knows how to tell a story. He keeps you transfixed. This is because his stories are ones that demand to be told.

I received a free copy of this book in return for my honest review and this is my review: Well where do I start with this book? For the first few chapters I kept getting confused. As in actual fact you have 3 stories occurring on in the same timeline. At first it seemed very disjointed as it skips from one view point to another and you don’t know which characters are which, until the story starts to unfold more. The main story is about William Carver a veteran radio journalist and his younger producer/co worker Patrick who both work for the BBC. The year is 2011 and they are in Cairo reporting on the Arab Spring Uprising. The uprising is being lead by the younger generation giving Patrick the producer better understanding of what the demonstrators are asking for. As they are using all of the modern media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to gain momentum and support from their followers, and also encouraging them to go stand along side them. The second story revolves around two brothers Gebre and Solomon Hassan from Asmara, Eritrea and their struggle to leave their own country to get a better life for themselves in Europe. Their grandfather pays a lot of money to traffickers to take his grandsons north across the Sahara. On their journey both brothers are witness to such terrible horrors as they are taken crossed the Sahara, in cramped conditions. How people were falling out of the trucks and the traffickers just carried on driving basically leaving them to die, as all they are interested in is the money they make. The third story is based in London around Rob Mariscal an Ex colleague of William Carver’s, who now works for the MOD as a spin doctor who is desperately trying to cover up the story that Carver is starting to unfold. Sadly I can only give this book 2 stars, as I’ve already said that it jumps from one story to the next. If the book had been structured in a different way it would have been a much more enjoyable book to read.