In a race against time, UNPOL (United Nation Police) arbitrator Jonah Oliver is on a mission to save the lives of 6.3 billion people.

This fast-paced technothriller paints a scenario so plausible, it’s actually quite terrifying. Though action-packed, the relationship between Jonah and Mariko adds quieter moments and balance to this big, multi-dimensional story. The sense of place and time is vivid, yet there are no wasted words.

Tag has an excellent plot that would translate well to the big screen.

An impressive debut. Highly recommended.
–Vicki Tyley for LitFest Magazine


I don’t want to give away any spoilers because the plot is detailed and there’s lots of little hooks that at the time you don’t realize what they are until they reveal themselves later. But I can say that the plot is a big one – a conspiracy to kill of two-thirds of the population which in a hundred years from now (when the story takes place) is 9 billion people.

Although the author has labeled the book science fiction it really isn’t science fiction, just our world one hundred years further on. I really liked his ideas about technology, (he describes how trains could run in vacuum tubes and take us from London to New York in 35 minutes – I thought that was far-fetched but checked it out on the web and it is possible) how the world operates and how society has changed.

The characters are interesting and each is well filled out with enough detail to give you a strong sense of who they are, and why they are doing the things they do. I don’t normally review books because I don’t think I’m that good at it but I wanted to give the author a pat on the back for doing a good job. Glad I picked this one up, the story moves along at a fast pace, flows nicely, and is a real page turner. This is a book you can sink your teeth into.
–Pete Northrop


Life is irrevocably changed for Arbitrator Jonah Oliver the day he’s called in to work with a mysterious runner, Jibril Muraz, who seems to have no past, and an amazing ability to avoid the potency of the truth treatment. Jonah is not sure why this strange and alien being is asking specifically for Jonah’s services, and things become even less clear when a telepathic message is received directly from Jibril that hints at secrets and betrayal. With little explanation, and much confusion, Jonah is thrown into a race against the clock to stop a terrible plot designed to eliminate two-thirds of the population. All the odds are stacked against him, and he soon finds that his past is not what he thought it was, and his future is even more uncertain.

In his first novel, Simon Royle has managed to create a riveting thriller that kept me up much past my bedtime. From the first chapter, I was engaged and eager to discover the secrets of Jonah’s life as they unfolded. The book is set a century in the future, and the world looks much as we may expect; it is different, but somehow exactly the same. In line with the human tendency to shorten words of common objects (think net for internet, phone for telephone, TV for television), some of the important terms of this century include, amongst other terms, dev (device), trav (travel), and cred (credit- monetary units earned by “contributions”). Although common travel has extended to the moon and the world is now united, at least in theory, the people and the experiences are recognizable and definitely feasible. The idea of “tagging” humans with their identity numbers is perhaps not even as far in the future as the timeline chosen for this book. This fictional reality is extremely realistic, and the implications of such a future really demand to be considered.

The characters in this book were interesting and decently developed for a thriller. I may have enjoyed some additional development when it came to some of the relationships, particularly between Jonah and Mariko, to really understand their connections. In a fast-paced storyline like this, however, it really is more secondary to the action, and the action was well done. The writing style was very engaging and readable. I really didn’t find myself rewriting any passages in my head, and that’s always a good thing! The plot was well-paced, and it really compelled me to read the whole way through, especially as I began the last half of the book. The book switches from first person (when Jonah is present) to third person (when we’re with everyone else), and it made me do a quick double take once in a while, but that is probably my fault, as I have a tendency not to read chapter headings, and that is where the time, place, and characters were clearly spelled out.
— GraceKrispy, Reviewer