Devon-born author A.B. Decker studies the fine line of revenge and where it can take you in his new novel

Tasked by Ben, an old friend, to locate a man in Turkey, private investigator Matt Quillan soon finds himself out of his depth when he has a flash drive thrust on him by a stranger who is arrested by armed officers shortly afterwards.

When Ben reveals that his mission is to avenge the murder of his sister, the conjunction of this assignment along with the flash drive burning a hole in Matt’s pocket puts them both – along with holidaymaker Amber – in mortal danger.

As the case lands Matt in the crosshairs of a local mobster, it is not only Ben’s search for vengeance which is left hanging in the balance.

A native of Exeter, A.B. Decker studied at Newcastle, Bristol and London, before working briefly as a teacher in Germany and a translator in the UK. On receiving an offer that he couldn’t refuse, he moved with his young family to work for a multinational company in Switzerland, where he eventually set up his own business. Flowers from the Black Sea is his second novel, having published his first, The Dark Frontier, in 2021.

As he explains: “For around 15 years, my wife and I would spend about three months of each year in Turkey, where we got to know a lovely Englishwoman and her much younger Turkish husband. Soon after arriving for one of our three-month stints, we ran into them one evening, and my first impression was how ill she looked. The next morning we had a call to say that she had died. Death was rumoured to have been cardiac in origin, despite a recent checkup that had given her heart a clean bill of health. There was no real explanation. After her death and a grieving period that any Hollywood director would have been proud of for its drama, the husband began to behave quite oddly, cutting all ties with previous friends, remarrying very quickly and doing his utmost to get his hands on all of his deceased wife’s property, including the claims of her children from her previous marriage.

The whole story behind the relationship and his behaviour naturally aroused suspicions. But no one said anything. Silence descended on the whole community and, after the initial shock, very few spoke about the Englishwoman and her young Turkish husband again.

There was no way anything could be proved. But I felt the least I could do would be to write a story around it – as a kind of revenge through literature – especially as femicide is still such an issue, and not only in Turkey.”

Flowers from the Black Sea is due for release on 28 March, priced £9.99. ISBN: 9781916668430.