The first Alex Martin novel by Ed Walker — a network noir thriller set in Brighton and London in the late 1980s.
When slum landlord Jan Kotze is linked to the suspicious death of a Brighton shop owner, Alex Martin and his circle of friends decide that exposure is not enough — justice must be forced.
They are an unlikely alliance: activists, citizen journalists, and political misfits scraping by on idealism and nerve. To fund their campaign, they open an illegal shebeen, drawing the attention of Harry Sexton, a calculating London underworld figure whose business interests are anything but clean. As Alex is pulled into Sexton’s orbit, survival begins to demand compromises that test every belief he holds.
Under the harsh discipline of Bruce, a former paratrooper turned ideological Marxist, the group prepares for confrontation. They are soon joined by Bob, Kotze’s sworn enemy — a vegan anarchist whose contempt for Bruce is instant and mutual. Tensions rise, loyalties fracture, and the stakes turn deadly. Two comrades are killed. Death threats follow.
Amid the pressure, Alex finds himself torn between two powerful connections: a growing love for Yvonne, a guarded and troubled young woman carrying secrets of her own, and an intense intellectual bond with Julie, a fiercely principled LGBT activist and formidable martial artist.
As surveillance tightens and betrayal closes in, Alex is ambushed while tailing Kotze and left close to death. A desperate plan is set in motion, but it backfires when Bruce is framed for murder. The group realises too late that they have been infiltrated — their premises bugged, their movements exposed — just as Kotze prepares a brutal reckoning.
What follows is a violent confrontation that forces each of them to face the cost of conviction, loyalty, and love. In the aftermath, Alex must decide how far he is willing to go to protect those he loves — and whether justice can ever be clean when power, violence, and compromise are the only tools left.
Set against the gritty political and social landscape of late 1980s Britain, Lamb to the Slaughter is a tense, morally charged thriller about solidarity, betrayal, and the blurred line between resistance and crime.
Network noir
Lamb to the Slaughter is the first in the Alex Martin series of network noir novels. Rather than centring events on a solitary hero, the story follows overlapping networks of activists, criminals and political actors whose competing actions shape the outcome. Numbers, chance, trust and improvisation matter as much as individual courage.
Buy Lamb to the Slaughter
Lamb to the Slaughter is available in paperback and hardback. The paperback can be ordered directly from RedLines Press or through any bookshop. The hardback is also available while stocks last. Alternatively, both editions can be ordered from Amazon.