After London — Lloyd Shepherd

BRITAIN, AROUND NOW: It is a decade since the devastating terrorist attack on London. The old capital is no more and fear of another attack has led to Britain being policed by Witness - an all-pervasive surveillance network of drones, cameras, facial recognition and machine intelligence.An old-school London detective, Ted Wood, is called to a case requiring his redundant skills - for who needs detectives when every crime is filmed and recorded? Two bodies have been discovered in a grand old house on the island of Anglesey, off the north-western coast of Wales - and Anglesey is the only place in Britain which is off the grid. Witness does not watch there, under the King's dispensation, because since London the island has operated as a refuge - part asylum, part hospital, part monastery - caring for those still suffering the aftershocks, physical and psychological, that followed the attack.Ted must find the killer, and he must do it fast. In barely a week's time, the King will invest his son as the new Prince of Wales. The powers-that-be are watching, and Ted is getting dangerously close to the twisted truth behind New Britain's all-seeing electronic eyes. AFTER LONDON asks the question: if the state could watch us all the time, how would it behave? When would it turn its face away? And what might it cover up in the name of keeping the peace?