Published 16th July 2026 by Zaffre.
From the cover of the book:
Journalist Gil Peck has spent decades breaking stories about Britain's political elites, shining a light on the darkest corners of Whitehall.
But when the Prime Minister, Stella Barnsbury, collapses during an interview on his podcast he finds himself at the centre of the scoop.
Within 48 hours, the Prime Minister is dead. And when foul play is confirmed, Gil and his partner Jess - the last civilians to see Stella alive - become the prime suspects.
With everything on the line, Gil and Jess investigate the government's shadowy contract with a global tech giant - a deal that collapsed in the lead up to Stella's assassination. Was it just another government U-turn, motive for murder - or worse?
In a brave new world of megalomaniac technocrats, malevolent AI super-intelligence and cutting-edge brain implants, Gil must confront a deadly, age-old question: how far will some go in the name of progress . . . and profit?
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Journalist Gil Peck has spent decades investigating political and financial misconduct in Whitehall, and has spent the last few years working alongside his life-partner and fellow-journalist, Jess Neeskens. Although their personal relationship might be in trouble, their working partnership holds strong, and their podcast series, Powerplay, is hugely popular. Their latest-high profile guest is the Prime Minister, Stella Barnsbury, and everything is going well until Stella suddenly becomes unwell and collapses, bringing the interview to an abrupt halt. Within forty-eight hours, Stella is dead, the victim of an unknown virus.
Gil and Jess find themselves part of the investigation into who is responsible for Stella's death, which has been ruled a possible assassination, but finding out what really happened is difficult amidst the power plays at Number 10. The only way to get to the truth is to look into the affair themselves. What they discover is a web of secrets and lies connected with a global tech giant in-line for a lucrative government contract, which has a powerful AI entity at its heart.
This third, and final, part of Peston's Gil Peck thrillers has Gil and Jess investigating a conspiracy that is very much a timely one - how money and the pursuit of power can influence the spread of AI into every part of our lives, and what this means for our future.
The novel unfurls from the perspectives of Gil and Jess, who got together in Peston's previous Gil Peck book, The Crash. The couple have now been together about twenty years and share two children (Jess' daughter Amy, and the son they share together, Ciaran), but Gil's obsessive habits have brought the relationship to breaking point.
When the PM dies shortly after being interviewed by the pair, they discover she may have been murdered as a result of a controversial deal to sell the personal details of every NHS patient to a global tech company connected with a former Russian oligarch - who readers of The Crash will remember well. However, the more they look into a succession of murky deals within deals, it appears there are far more sinister games at play than making a fat profit from medical information.
Heavy subject matter around political ideology, complicated relationships clouded by past sins, and the hitches within Gil and Jess' private lives, do mean the story is slow to take off - especially given the time span between the previous book and this one. It took me a while to get my head around it all, even though the intriguing prologue does its best to hook you from page one.
Slow-burn is the name of the game from most of the book, with threads emerging about corruption at the highest levels of public office, the insidious spread of AI, and past romantic attachments that ended badly. Gradually the scattered threads come together, and there are some really entertaining elements that involve a nice bit of globe trotting, James Bond-esque espionage fare, megalomaniac level sci-fi shenanigans, bizarre drug-induced fever dreams, and nationwide terror situations.
Although I do not think this final book is as sharp as The Crash, which beautifully encapsulates how and why the financial collapse happened within a really engaging story, there is plenty here to entertain anyone interested in a tale with bang-up-to-date themes. The characters are fun, with plenty of morally grey behaviour to get your teeth into - and the baddies are very bad indeed. The twists and turns are largely well-spun, and the emotional content hits nicely in the home stretch.
I was not expecting this to be the last Gil Peck book, so that was a surprise. However, Peston has cleverly set things up for the series to continue in a different form - I await developments with interest!
The Kill Switch is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to Zaffre for sending me a porrf of this book, and Compulsive Readers for inviting me to be part of this blog tour.
About the author:
Robert Peston is ITV's political editor, presenter of the politics show Peston, founder of the education charity, Futures for All (www.futuresforall.org), and vice president of Hospice UK. He has written five critically acclaimed non-fiction books, How Do We Fix This Mess?, Who Runs Britain?, Brown's Britain, How To Run Britain and WTF?, which was described by the Financial Times as 'mandatory reading' for anyone seeking to understand Brexit, Trump and the collapse of confidence in western liberalism. His first thriller, The Whistleblower, published by Zaffre, was 'brilliant' according to the Guardian and called 'a rollicking read' by the Evening Standard. Its sequel, The Crash, was praised as 'clever' by the Times and as 'fast paced' by the Financial Times.
For a decade until the end of 2015, he was at the BBC, as economics editor and business editor, and in the 1990s he was at the Financial Times, as political editor, financial editor and head of investigations. At the BBC he played a prominent role in exposing the causes and consequences of the credit crunch, banking crisis and Great Recession. Peston has won more than 30 awards for his journalism, including Journalist of the Year and Scoop of the Year (twice) from the Royal Television Society. Find him on his blog at itv.com/robertpeston, and on Substack and X as @peston. He hosts a podcast with Steph McGovern, The Rest is Money.
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