Tick Tock

Simon Mayo’s chilling new thriller, TICK TOCK, sees a mysterious tinnitus-like illness take root and start spreading like wildfire. Exciting and urgently contemporary, the piercingly insightful novel tells the story of a global catastrophe through the eyes of three people at the heart of the storm. Simon’s book series, ITCH, has been developed in to a returning series, now 2 series in, for ABC and the BBC. MAD BLOOD STIRRING is being developed as feature by Jack Thorne for House Productions. And KNIFE EDGE is in development with Kommix.

It starts quietly enough. A tick-tick-ticking you can hear in your ear. Tinnitus, you think. It will pass. But it doesn’t. It gets worse – and then you pass it on.

Before you know it, it spreads. Elsewhere across the globe, it emerges: small outbreaks at first, but then suddenly it’s a plague – and only days later it is already killing people.

In an increasingly affected north London school, teacher Kit Chaplin is struggling to understand what he is witnessing. Even Lilly Slater, his partner and an eminent vaccinologist, can’t work out what’s happening. As it spreads, little by little, they are inexorably drawn into the mystery behind the illness. And what they discover will change the world as they know it…

Simon Mayo is one of Britain’s best-loved and well-known radio presenters who worked for BBC Radio 1 from 1982 until 2022. His first novel, ITCH, was featured in The Sunday Time’s UK top 10 and was the debut children’s hardback of the year. His latest novel, KNIFE EDGE, was published in 2020. Simon is represented by Sam Copeland at RCW Literary Agency, and TICK TOCK will be published by Transworld in August 2022.