A Trail of Zero Risk locations with Simon Hayes
A Trail of Zero Risk locations with Simon Hayes
Need some adrenalin in your blood? Want a thriller to top you up?
Simon Hayes has just the thing:
Map of locations in Zero Risk
Zero Risk is a financial and political thriller revolving around a cataclysmic ‘Black Swan’ cyber-attack that you should pray never happens. The premise is simple: on Christmas Day a hacker adds a zero to all the nation’s bank accounts and then, on Boxing Day, another… now what’s not to like about that? Well, other than financial Armageddon by New Year. The only clue to the hacker’s intentions are cryptic daily emails, centred on Hieronymus Bosch’s medieval representation of the seven deadly sins and packed with colourful artistic and cultural references. Are they important clues to a puzzle or just plain nonsense: psychedelic ramblings or psychotic threats? It has dastardly bankers and dodgy politicians; an ensemble cast I hope you’ll love, and love to hate.
Map of locations in Zero Risk
It is unashamedly a modern morality tale, set in London at Christmas (now whoever had that idea before?). But the story trail takes the reader from London to Europe and across the USA, stopping en route in Tanzania, so locations are absolutely crucial!
Map of locations in Zero Risk
The financial heart of the story is in the City of London, near St Paul’s Cathedral. I worked in finance for nearly twenty years, in London, Boston, Tokyo and Hong Kong, but my journey started at a wonderful octagon-shaped building at the top of Cheapside, so it’s an area that’s always resonated. Zero Risk is centred on the perpetrator’s fascination with the seven deadly sins, so the juxtaposition of god and mammon represented by the Cathedral is important. St Paul’s stood tall during the blitz; these cyber-attacks are a very modern threat.
St Pauls Cathedral (c) Simon Hayes
Map of locations in Zero Risk
As with previous national disasters, the self-aggrandizing Prime Minister is slow to react, despite the prescient warnings of his Chief of Staff. For a while, Downing Street takes centre stage. Then, as the crisis deepens, the action moves to the UK equivalent of the White House Special Situation Room, in Whitehall.
Whitehall (c) Simon Hayes
Map of locations in Zero Risk
The principal characters all live in London. The hero of the piece, Rob Tanner, is a West Londoner, like me. He lives near Ravenscourt Park, his estranged father further west in Boston Manor, his sister in Chiswick. The Thames riverside at Hammersmith plays a key role. These are all places I’ve known and loved since childhood. Tanner’s favourite pub was one of mine, ditto his favourite restaurant in Knightsbridge… well they say first novels are autobiographical! The Royal Opera House at Christmas is as magical place as any location in any story, I can assure you.
Royal Opera House (c) Simon Hayes
Map of locations in Zero Risk
The lead female protagonist, Ashley Markham, is an American computer security expert from New York. An army brat by upbringing, she’s lived all over the world, finally settling in the Big Apple after college in California (Berkeley) and Boston (MIT). She and Tanner meet in the opulent Christmassy lobby of the Lanesborough Hotel, Hyde Park as the snow begins to blanket the Capital. And the rest, as they say, is… unpredictable.
Lanesborough Hotel (c) Simon Hayes
Map of locations in Zero Risk
With financial markets on the brink of collapse, Tanner races against the clock, with the help of two private investigators, to decode not just the bizarre emails but their deeper meaning and implications. The detectives’ investigations take them from London to New York and Austin, Texas. One of them stays at one of my very favourite hotels, The Iroquois in New York.
IROQUOIS HOTEL (c) Simon Hayes
Map of locations in Zero Risk
One of the investigators was born in Hong Kong, the other spent many happy summers in Tanzania. Their personalities are heavily shaped by those experiences. I’m privileged to have spent long periods in both Asia and Africa. Meanwhile the disgraced former CEO of the bank broods, and plans revenge, in his state-of-the-art chalet in Zermatt, Switzerland.
Map of locations in Zero Risk
Artworks are key to the story: Hieronymus Bosch’s major works are at the Prado Museum in Madrid; there’s a wonderful François Lemoyne painting from the Wallace Collection in Marylebone; and a beautiful René Magritte painting of lovers, now in New York’s MoMA.
London street names (c) Simon Hayes
Map of locations in Zero Risk
One of my favourite characters is Tommy Steele, the chauffeur to the Chairman of the Bank. A taxi driver by training, he has long since switched from piloting a black cab to an executive Mercedes. His skill and expertise – the “Knowledge” – is vital as the book reaches its climax.
Cycling the route Tommy takes through the back streets of snow-clad London was one of my most enjoyable pieces of research. As a born-and-bred Londoner, I thought I had a pretty good knowledge of the City’s street names but there were tens (if not hundreds) of wonderful new appellations just in the small arc traced from Soho to St Katherine Dock: Short’s Gardens, Betterton, Remnant and Carey Streets, Dorset Rise; the list is almost endless.
Map of locations in Zero Risk
The heroes of Zero Risk are an ‘everywoman’ and an ‘everyman’ who make mistakes and are punished for them and who, maybe just maybe, fall in love into the bargain. It’s about loss and guilt and, above all, truth. It weaves its way from London to the US and back to northern Europe. It has lots of short chapters à la Dan Brown or Terry Hayes.
The Black Friar (c) Simon Hayes
Map of locations in Zero Risk
I really hope the novel will give readers as much pleasure following the various location trails as it gave me to write and describe them. I’m fortunate to have lived a large part of my adult life abroad, but writing Zero Risk reminded me how wonderful the city I’m proud to call home really is. I hope the book serves as a small personal thank you, because London is undoubtedly one of the stars of the story.
Thank you so much Simon for an EPIC trail around London via your novel!
BookTrail Boarding Pass: Zero Risk
Twitter: @mySimonHayes
