The Costonoan Ohlone indigenous peoples honoured their ancestors and the natural world in a sacred sense of place. They held the living powers within land and sea in supreme awe and reverence. Their golden gateway, the Northern Californian coastline, was celebrated in the last-remembered line of an ancient Ohlone Ghost Dance chant:

Dancing on the Brink of the World

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Dancing on the Brink of the World is a literate high stakes high concept conspiracy crime thriller set in post-9/11 San Francisco and London.

Credit card crime is hot news, with a fascinated market for such a story everywhere these cards exist. Dancing on the Brink of the World describes the biggest credit card robbery in criminal history. It takes the lid off the way the credit card industry works, and reveals how vulnerable the banking computer systems really are.

In the best traditions of Clancy and Forsyth, the technical details are based upon meticulous research and my extensive experience and qualifications as a mainframe computer realtime banking systems expert.

Every aspect of the robbery plan - from the electromagnetic bombs, to the ability to bypass biometric ID passports and fingerprint intrusion systems - would work in real life.

As a seasoned Silicon Valley systems programmer I gained an intimate knowledge of all aspects of card fraud and the interchange between the worldwide credit and banking industries. A credit card robbery of this magnitude, with carefully fleshed out characterisation and authentic insider computer and location detail, is perhaps unprecedented in heist and thriller novels of this genre.

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I designed the front cover art whilst thinking of a scene towards the end of the novel ~ it shows Gerke Alley in San Francisco’s North Beach — just before a typical fog whiteout — with an illuminated Coit Tower atop Telegraph Hill looming in the distance, framed by a rare lunar eclipse.

I also had a little fun with the sound clips on this site — each and every one has direct relevance to themes explored within the novel, so I hope you also have fun identifying them!

Two foghorns on the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge sound together to make a single simultaneous blast every twenty seconds.  The Golden Gate Bridge mid-channel fog diaphone sounds two blasts every forty seconds.

Ships heading into San Francisco Bay steer left of the foghorn on the south tower and right of the mid-channel fog diaphone. Outbound ships stay to the right of the mid-channel fog diaphone. On a still night in Gerke Alley, San Francisco Bay foghorns can be heard along with the bark and grunt of sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf, just past the base of Coit Tower, with a two hundred and eighty-four foot drop to Sansome and Levi Plaza at sea level.

Site Copyright © 2006, Andrew Rowland.

No part of this site can be reproduced without explicit permission from the owners.

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 Con shivered.

 The bark of sea lions at the wharf carried easily over Telegraph Hill through the cold dead atmosphere. A wailing foghorn dirge floated through deep dense sea salt air somewhere out in the Bay’s freezing waters.

 San Francisco fog is a trickster, forever playing hide and seek with the curdling, hypnotic, baritone moans of the haunting diaphones, their mesmerizing sounds eternally skipping and bending so you never quite know which direction they’ve come from. It’s a special breed of fog, crafty and ancient, insinuating and inveigling to cocoon your ears and envelope them snugly in its still life cryogenic heartbeat.

 The fog would be heavy out there by now, Con thought.

 Dank, palpable, near zero visibility at sea level where it pushed in from the Pacific past Point Bonita lighthouse on the Marin headlands to envelope the Golden Gate Bridge at Fort Point.

 Four seasons in one day; the local microclimates in full swing:

 And it was coming their way.

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 Con willed his beating heart to slow, controlled his breathing. He stared at a star high to the right of the vermillion-inflamed orb seemingly tethered over Coit Tower: Sirius A, with her nearby pup, Sirius B.

 He’d never seen such a beautiful blue star in the night sky before.

 Then he remembered the ancient Hopi prophecy:

 “When the Blue Star Kachina makes its appearance in the heavens, the Fifth World will emerge.” 

 — That will be the Day of Purification.

 Con looked again at his UTC dial in the blood red moonlit gloom, the pale green half-life beta-glowing tritium hands inert, unmoving, ashamed.

 Time had stopped for him.