Flashover

Paul Quinlan

Nov 2025 · Troubador Publishing Ltd

About this ebook

In the summer of 1971 two young boys stumble across the mutilated bodies a young mother and a Catholic priest. When crucial evidence they provide is ignored by police, the wrong man is convicted. As he languishes in prison, a series of similar macabre double-killings takes place in the years that follow.

When one of the boys reaches adulthood, he realises that he can identify the true perpetrator. He also meets and falls in love with the daughter of the wrongly convicted prisoner, but they now become the new targets of the true killer and his accomplice.

Flashover is the story of psychopathic and misogynistic serial murder, miscarriage of justice, political ambition, and the redeeming power of love. Against a background of religious uncertainty and political change, we follow the story of two young people whose lives have been turned upside down by murder, and their pursuit of justice. At the same time, we are introduced to the killers, who are driven by a desire for political advancement, and the pathological need to inflict sadistic suffering on others.

About the author

Paul Quinlan is an academic with a long track record of publishing in the field of political science. Having worked and lived in the UK, Italy and Australia, he has drawn on his knowledge of politics and academic life in constructing this plot and some of its characters. Flashover is his debut novel loosely inspired by the terrible series of murders attributed to ‘The Monster of Florence’ in the 1980s while the author was living there.