The Gentlemen’s Ledger
James WR Corden-Lloyd
Male expats. Visiting politicians. A killer moving through an international world of privilege — and a new left-hand glove left behind.
Still being written — no publication date to promise yet. Readers on this page are told the day it is out.
Some accounts are kept in ink. This one is kept in blood.
A body surfaces in a world that prefers its problems invisible. The men who move through it are the familiar ones: expats on contract, politicians on a visit, fixers on a payroll, and the staff who make sure nothing is ever photographed twice.
Then the killings begin — each one courteous, each one complete, each one marked by the same small detail. Always the left hand. Always a new glove. It reads like a calling card, but a calling card is meant to be seen, and whoever is doing this wants to be read.
As the circle tightens and the visits become less social, what emerges is not a chase but an accounting: a ledger of favours, silences and debts, and a growing sense that the person keeping it has been in the room all along.
“Always the left hand. Always new.”
What the book is built on.
An international circle of male expats, visiting politicians and the people who move between them — contracts, receptions, photographs, and the private accounts that never appear in any of it.
A killer who moves through that world with unnerving good manners. Always the left hand. Always a new glove left behind — a signature that reads less like arrogance than like bookkeeping.
What begins as a series of elegant, deliberate crimes becomes an account of who owes what to whom — and of who has been quietly keeping the book.
The authenticity readers notice.
James WR Corden-Lloyd writes fiction from the worlds he has actually worked in — the same range that shapes Topball’s coaching and English programmes, and the same eye for pressure that makes his coaching work.
- Two decades living and working across Asia's expat, sporting and security circles.
- Three years managing a K9 security company in Jakarta — the operational reality behind the scenes.
- A pupil and assistant racehorse trainer in South Africa and the UK, inside a world of owners, agents and money.
- A tennis coach since 2010 and an accredited English teacher — someone who reads people under pressure for a living.
Four titles are already published — tennis education, English learning and fact-based fiction — all on the Amazon author page.
Watch it being written.
Scenes taking shape, the research behind them, and the first teaser images are shared on James’s author Instagram as the novel is written. Follow it to see the book arrive — or leave your email and be told the day it is published.
There is no publication date to promise yet, and none is invented here. The email list exists so readers, agents and producers hear it from James first.
