The Cat's-Paw

The Cat’s-Paw (95,000 words)

The Cat’s-Paw is a pulse-pounding intercontinental thriller ripped from real headlines. This story straddles literary depth and genre thrills, tackling urgent social issues through a fierce, half-Haitian lesbian protagonist. Though romance takes a backseat, the raw, tragic love affair between two women—groundbreaking for an international thriller—echoes the haunting passion of The English Patient, with Egypt’s ancient sands serving as a pivotal backdrop.

In the sinister underbelly of London, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl is brutally slain, and her siblings vanish. Enter British Agent Helen Ramsey, tasked with a desperate rescue mission that spirals into a relentless pursuit of a shadowy global human trafficking kingpin. As bodies pile up from America’s bustling streets to Egypt’s scorching deserts and England’s foggy alleys, Helen is ensnared in a deadly cat-and-mouse game masterminded by a ruthless adversary plotting a targeted genocide against Muslims.
But the predator becomes prey.

When her lover is savagely murdered, Helen morphs into a vengeful antiheroine, shattering international laws in her quest for retribution. Will she outlast the carnage to rescue the children and thwart a looming modern-day holocaust—or will the cat’s-paw claim her as its final victim?

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This non-procedural thriller draws on war correspondent Marie Colvin’s 2008 prized Sunday Times reporting of a worldwide child slavery operation. Subsequently, Ms. Colvin was assassinated by the Syrian government in 2012. Recently, thousands of people across multiple cities participated in a “Walk for Freedom” to bring awareness to global trafficking coordinated by A21, so the issue is definitely timely.

The Cat’s-Paw has been structurally and comprehensively line-edited by award-winning author/editor Michelle Barker at The Darling Axe. In terms of plot twists and pacing, the novel is reminiscent of The Night Manager (John Le Carré), Zulu (Caryl Férey), Red Sparrow (Jason Matthews), and Catch & Kill (Ronan Farrow).