Sleeper Beach

By: Nick Harkaway

Narrated by: Davis Brooks

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Karla's Choice, comes a thrilling new detective novel.

On the shore of a rundown holiday town, a young woman washes up dead. Martha Erskine, the matriarch of a local dynasty, suspects a member of her own family might be involved in the murder, and calls in Cal to investigate.

Cal Sounder is a detective first and a Titan second, but it's not easy to make that work. It's hard to be an ordinary guy when you're fundamentally not ordinary anymore. Cal has recently taken a dose of T7, a rare drug that is usually the preserve of the rich, making its users - called the Titans - younger and bigger each time they take it, so that as they age the bodies of the ultra-wealthy become as immense as their bank accounts.

As Cal digs into the crime, he finds this forgotten town is simmering with wage disputes, strikes, and political conflict, and no one is quite who they say they are - not even the victim. As Cal second-guesses everyone he meets, he is forced to confront his own identity and ask himself who he wants to be from the far side of the mirror of power, age and greed.

Sleeper Beach is a hugely original, powerful and action-packed novel from the acclaimed novelist Nick Harkaway.©2025 Nick Harkaway

Critic reviews

A gripping, genre-blending story from the author of Karla's Choice

After resurrecting characters created by his father, John le Carré, in last year's spy thriller Karla's Choice, Harkaway returns to his characteristic territory of "crime with a sci-fi twist"

We loved the first Titanium Noir novel from Nick Harkaway here at New Scientist, set in a world where the megarich can take a drug that stops them from ageing, but grows them to huge - titanic - proportions. In this latest from Harkaway, who's fresh from continuing his father John Le Carré's legacy in Karla's Choice, he tells the story of detective and Titan Cal, who is investigating the murder of a young woman in a rundown holiday town

Like the best fictional PIs, Cal doesn't just care about catching criminals . . . another satisfying dose of science fictional noir

[A] nifty fusion of crime and sci-fi . . . In a novel teeming with memorable characters, Harkaway handles the blend of genres with skill and pizzazz

Hugely entertaining . . . the narrator writes like Raymond Chandler

I like where this series is heading and how it has become this fascinating and unexpected dissertation on class and capital

This is a tightly woven, very well written novel in the best Harkaway tradition

[An] extraordinary series.