Christopher J Carey's powerful novel takes place in an England on the verge of bloody revolution. The deprived and the subjugated, suppressed by state control and strangled by bureaucratic red tape, are ready to explode. All it needs is one wrong move, just one word too many. The spark is provided by one man's racist tirade, overhead and misinterpreted. Once set alight, the uncontainable violence spreads throughout the land. Almost all citizens are affected and we see fundamentally decent men like Brian Kinnahan, struggling to protect his wife and children, engulfed by a maelstrom of destruction. The government, appalled at the violence, recalls Sir Paul Conrad from retirement. His brief is to restore peace to the riot-torn country - at any cost. When the Hammer Falls can be read as a cautionary tale; a warning of events to come if the signs of unrest are unheeded. But it is also a story of hope as bonds of brotherhood are forged in the face of terrible adversity and the common humanity of the people prevails.

"By way of introduction to this digitised, reprint of my novel “When The Hammer Falls” I considered it appropriate to give some background information of its conception, to try, if I can, to make it absolutely clear why I was encouraged, and inspired to put it out there again. The novel, although fiction, seems to be the unfortunate harbinger; the prediction if you prefer, of the desperate, critical chaos regarding migrants, going on in America at the moment, and equally,  but maybe, a little less so, here in the UK. Certain, ignorant, members of the political and social backdrop to our country, speak so derogative about migrants without considering the harm they cause to the fragile fabric of our reliance on each other in an effort to simply live in peace. We would not have survived the pandemic without the wonderful work-force of diverse ethnicities; they risked their lives to save ours, and now for the crux of the matter, they, want to “Repatriate by force where it is deemed necessary…”. This is a line on page 6 of my novel, and we know forced repatriation is happening at this very moment in the USA; believe me I'm sure it is being considered here."