Scales of Silence: international wildlife crime and murder at Newport Docks

When investigative journalist Gareth Rhys is called to a riverbank in Newport, he expects another grim local story.Instead, he finds a murdered businessman with something extraordinary clutched in his hand: a scale from one of the world's most illegally trafficked animals.A pangolin.The discovery should make no sense in South Wales. But the deeper Gareth digs, the more the dead man's apparently respectable business interests begin to overlap with international freight, Newport Docks and a trade worth millions to organised criminals.Then another body is found.This time, Gareth has already seen the victim alive.Following the evidence takes him from old wildlife-crime cases and damaged badger setts to warehouses, shipping records and the vast flow of legitimate cargo moving through British ports. Somewhere inside that system, illegal wildlife products may be travelling unnoticed.But Gareth is a journalist, not a police officer. He has no warrant, no badge and no authority to demand answers. All he has are questions, sources and a lifelong inability to leave a story alone when something does not fit.As the investigation draws him closer to the people behind the trafficking route, Gareth must decide how far he is prepared to go for the truth, and how much danger he has the right to bring home with him.Set against the docks, streets and surrounding countryside of South Wales, Scales of Silence is an atmospheric British crime thriller combining murder, investigative journalism, wildlife crime and international organised trafficking.For readers who enjoy intelligent, evidence-led mysteries, believable characters and crime fiction rooted firmly in the real world.