The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
Tick Tock

Tick Tock

A Times Thriller of the Year

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

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 ?rst, 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...

Exciting and urgently contemporary, this piercingly insightful novel tells the story of a global catastrophe through the eyes of the three people at the heart of the storm.

© Simon Mayo 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Reviews

  • Tick Tock is an unnervingly plausible and scintillatingly paced thriller
    Radio Times

About the author

Simon Mayo

Simon Mayo MBE is a writer and broadcaster. His previous books include the Sunday Times bestseller Knife Edge, Mad Blood Stirring, Blame and the Itch trilogy, filmed for TV by the ABC. He hosts Drivetime on Greatest Hits Radio and hosts the 'The Take' film-review podcast with Professor Mark Kermode.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more