Manchester, 1979: young Ian Hammond ‘s life changes with the Woolworth’s fire of 8th May – it is the last time he will see his mother. Thirty-six years later, the adult Hammond, now a Detective Inspector with the Greater Manchester Police, is shocked to see a face from that day surface in connection with the sudden disappearance of young Genetics researcher Emma Morgan. 

Emma’s parents, Eva and Tom, are frantic. The Morgans are no strangers to loss: Eva’s first husband and daughter died in a road accident in 1990, while two years earlier, Tom’s three-year-old son from a previous marriage succumbed to the effects of a disease called Progeria. 

When retired Metropolitan Police Detective Tony Clarke spots a link between the deaths of Eva’s first husband and daughter in 1990 and Emma’s disappearance, Hammond and his team finally have a suspect – James Moran, a Security Guard at Xeon Genetics. But Moran is only in his late thirties … too young to have been the same man seen at the crash site in 1990. So who is he?

As the desperate hunt for Emma and her abductor continues, Hammond struggles to deal with the traumatic personal memories the case has re-awakened, and Eva and Tom’s already fragile relationship is tested to breaking point as they contemplate the loss of another child. 

The truth about Moran’s identity will shock them all.

Set in modern-day Manchester, where the quietly intense world of the scientific researcher meets the pedestrian and sometimes violent reality of the twenty-first century detective, ‘The Methuselah Paradox’ is a blend of speculative fiction and gritty crime mystery.