For Detective Superintendent Harry (H) Harrington, life is being very unkind. Firstly, his wife is brutally murdered, then, after he nearly dies himself, and his assistant does, he is swept along on a grim journey of government intrigue, duplicity, and political assassination as he tries to uncover the truth, find the identity of his wife's killer and save his rubbished reputation from the gutter.
The Illusionists is set against the backdrop of the late teens of the twenty-first century. Already much weakened by economic and moral meltdown, Britain is facing an ongoing and ever increasing terrorist threat to her national security. A threat seen by some of those in power to be so existentially serious that the 'Special Relationship', with the United States of America, is regarded as even more sacrosanct than ever; a holy of holies that must be nurtured and maintained above virtually all other international considerations. Britain is also a country, as she secretly throws away centuries of reason and humanitarian reform of the criminal justice system, steadily and incrementally moving towards a totalitarian future, a future where nothing is quite as it should be, or indeed, as it seems.
However, above all things, The Illusionists is also about how, in an ever more morally dystopian world, a thoroughly decent human being can, metaphorically, sell his soul to the Dark Side and the truly disastrous personal consequences such an unwise transaction can, and often does, bring to its forever unfulfilled, and truly hapless, owner.
