The Atomograph

Joe Cartigan is a washed-up heavyweight boxer living in post-pandemic London. No career, no future, no one who would come looking if he disappeared. When a woman named Kira recruits him into a covert organisation that polices a hundred-year span of history, he becomes a Lawman: an operative sent back in time to prevent catastrophic events before they happen.

The device that makes it possible is the Atomograph. Disguised as a wristwatch, it carries a finite charge and operates under strict rules. Every crossing costs time he cannot recover. Every mission puts him closer to a line he cannot uncross. Ghost mode renders him invisible but drains the device at ten times the normal rate. If the charge runs out, he is stranded. No rescue. No second chance.

Cartigan's early operations take him from a Whitehall intelligence extraction to the besieged streets of Sarajevo, each mission escalating in violence and moral complexity. He begins to trust the system, trust Kira, and trust the rules that govern the device on his wrist.

Then comes Manhattan, September 2001. A rogue predecessor has crossed the Span and is attempting to prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center. Cartigan's orders are to stop him. For the first time, the job is not to save lives. It is to make sure three thousand people die on schedule.

The Atomograph is the first book in a thriller trilogy that combines time-travel mechanics with conspiracy fiction, institutional betrayal, and real historical events. Set in London, Sarajevo, and New York, it is a story about precision, compromise, and the weight of following orders when the orders stop making sense.