The Sandpit - Nicholas Shakespeare

When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, Leandro, he expects a quiet life. His time living on the edge as a foreign correspondent is over.

But these rainy streets turn out to be just as treacherous-as those he used to walk in Rio. Leandro’s schoolmates are the children of powerful people, and a chance conversation with another father, Iranian scientist Rustum Marvar, sets Dyer onto a truly dangerous path.

Then Marvar disappears. Soon, sinister factions are circling, and become acutely interested in what Dyer knows about Marvar’s world-changing discovery…