Sunday Times bestselling author and story consultant

Welcome

‘Cordy specialises in fast-paced, high-concept thrillers where the fate of multitudes, if not all humanity, is at stake.’  Financial Times May 2025

Hello, my name is Michael Cordy and I am the author of seven novels including my latest Manhattan Down.

Thank you for visiting my website.  I hope you find something about my books and storytelling that interests you.

 

 

Praise for Manhattan Down

‘The plot is terrific, the writing punchy, the pace fast and the characters delightful.  The twists add real piquancy to the tale’Literary Review 

‘Michael Cordy’s blend of heist, technology and geopolitical thriller is a riveting read’ –Sunday Times 

‘Rossi and Lockwood make a convincing team in this fast-paced read’ – Financial Times

‘Manhattan Down is Cordy back at his brilliant best and ripe for another Hollywood buy up’ – Express 

‘A feat of world building asking challenging questions about the future… engaging’ – Crimetime

THE NEW THRILLER OUT ON MAY 8th 2025

Manhattan Down

The city that never sleeps just said goodnight

A rollercoaster high concept international thriller which dares to take the world to the edge of oblivion.

On the anniversary eve of the 9/11 terror attack, New York swelters under a heat dome of record temperatures. Even the global leaders assembled at the UN HQ are forced to admit that the climate crisis has reached boiling point and the world’s time is running out.

That same day, at precisely 5:25 p.m., everyone on Manhattan Island – every man, woman and child, including all the world leaders at the UN – falls unconscious. Everyone that is, except for Samantha Rossi, a single mother reeling from devastating personal news and Nick Lockwood, a wounded NYPD detective who wakes from a coma just as the City That Never Sleeps falls into one.

Cordy specialises in fast-paced, high-concept thrillers where the fate of multitudes, if not all humanity, is at stake…Rossi and Lockwood make a convincing team in this fast-paced read.

– Financial Times May 2025

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The Colour of Death

The line between life and death is never black or white

In a residential neighbourhood of Portland, Oregon an unknown young woman uncovers a shocking crime scene by inexplicably sensing the evil within its walls.  To the police, she herself is a mystery.  She can’t even tell them her own name.

They christen her Jane Doe.

Suffering terrifying hallucinations, Jane is assigned to Nathan Fox, a forensic psychiatrist struggling with his own demons.  Together they must piece together the jigsaw that is Jane’s identity.

Fox soon discovers that his patient has an unprecedented form of synaesthesia, in which her five senses merge to form a sixth, and that her hallucinations appear to be memories – but not her own.

Then a sequence of brutal killings terrorise the city and Fox learns Jane is the only cryptic link between the unrelated victims.  To solve the mystery, Fox must discard his black and white preconceptions, look beyond the spectrum of normal human experience and confront the dark truth of her past…and his own.

The Colour of Death grips you from the explosive first chapter

– The Tattooed Book

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The Source

It's not a myth. It exists. Find it.

When all hope has gone – seek out the impossible…

Ambitious geologist Ross Kelly has it all: a lucrative career searching for oil across the world and a beautiful, brilliant wife, Lauren, pregnant with their first child. But when Lauren, a Yale academic, deciphers the university’s mysterious Voynich manuscript, which has confounded experts for centuries, everything changes.

An attempt to steal her translation of the Voynich leaves Lauren and their unborn child hovering on the brink of death, and Ross in the depths of despair. Encounters with a sinister Vatican priest and then a mysterious nun convince Ross to seek salvation in the four-and-a-half-centuries-old manuscript, which chronicles the ill-fated discovery of a mythic, fabulous garden, deep in the jungles of the New World: an Eden so terrible and miraculous it rewrites the book of Genesis and defies all reason.

The Source is the fifth book by Michael Cordy and it’s fabulous.

– Eurocrime

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The Venus Conspiracy

How can a drug that makes people fall madly in love be a bad thing?

So thinks Professor Bacci when he inadvertently unlocks the biochemical key to falling in love, and develops a drug capable of creating emotions indistinguishable from the real thing. Determined that the world should benefit from his discovery, he seeks funding and business advice from a private Swiss bank, owned by the secretive Kappel family.  Unknown to Bacci, however, Helmut Kappel sees love as a sickness to be exploited, and has his own plan for abusing the drug’s power – a cynical nightmare of breathtaking arrogance far removed from Bacci’s naive dream of spreading love around the world.

Ripped from tomorrow’s headlines, “The Venus Conspiracy” is Michael Cordy’s latest glimpse of a compelling future where even human emotions can be bought and where true love can be faked.

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The Lucifer Code (Previously published as Lucifer)

What happens to us when we die?

Oblivion.  Or so believes Dr Miles Fleming, a brilliant, young neuroscientist who has developed a device capable of reading human brainwaves.  But when his own brother contacts him after being certified dead for six whole minutes, Fleming wonders if he’s got it all wrong.  His search for the truth uncovers a terrifying religious conspiracy to stage the most ambitious experiment the world has ever seen – to prove beyond doubt the existence of a heaven or a hell.  As the world awaits the final

judgment, Fleming must confront his own demons to save not only his own soul but that of all humanity.

“The Lucifer Code” pits the faith of religion against the certainty of science in a heart stopping thriller which explores our deepest fears.

A masterclass in how it’s done – sheer entertainment

– The Observer

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The Crime Code (Previously published as Crime Zero)

When The Ultimate Solution Becomes the Ultimate Crime

Violent crime has become a global epidemic, nowhere more so than in the United States.  Everything from the death penalty to liberal reforms has failed. Nothing has been effective until now.  Project Conscience promises to be the solution.  It is a bold attempt by a powerful group of scientists, politicians and senior law-enforcement personnel to use gene therapy to treat male criminals and cure violent crime.  But among their number are those with a more sinister agenda, who would go further and turn the dream of Project Conscience into the nightmare of Crime Zero.

Luke Decker, a criminal psychologist disillusioned with the growing dependence on genetic science, is on the verge of resigning from the FBI when a death-row killer’s whispered revelation threatens everything he believes in and catapults him into the heart of the conspiracy.  Decker’s only ally is Dr. Kathy Kerr, an old flame and ideological adversary, and the geneticist behind the original Project Conscience.  Together they must put aside their differences to fight against a scheme so ruthless in intent and so vast in scope that it will irrevocably change the evolution of mankind itself.

Our answer to Michael Crichton

– The Mirror

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The Sunday Times Bestseller

The Messiah Code (Previously published as The Miracle Strain)

After two thousand years, the wait is over...

At the moment of his supreme triumph, a man of science dodges an assassin’s bullet and loses everything that truly matters in his life. Now only a miracle can save Dr. Tom Carter’s dying daughter: the blood of salvation shed twenty centuries ago.

In the volatile heart of the Middle East, amid the devastating secrets of an ancient brotherhood awaiting a new messiah, Tom Carter must search for answers to the mysteries that have challenged humankind since the death and resurrection of the greatest Healer who every walked the Earth. Because suddenly Carter’s life, the life of his little girl, and the fate of the world hang in the balance…

An engrossing and  intelligent work.

– San Francisco Chronicle

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Latest updates

Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival 12th September 2025I

Posted on 18th June, 2025

I am delighted to be joining the Harsh Environments panel with Harry Whitehead and Eve Smith at the Bloody Scotland Crime Writing Festival on 12th September 2025.  Tickets available at …

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Page One – The Writer’s Podcast

Posted on 17th June, 2025

Listen to my chat with Marco Rinaldi and Tariq Ashkanani on their brilliant Page One – The Writer’s Podcast.  You can listen to here on Apple Podcasts.  But it’s also …

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Manhattan Down review in the Sunday Times

Posted on 23rd May, 2025

‘Michael Cordy’s blend of heist, technology and geopolitical thriller is a riveting read.’ Sunday Times

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Storytelling

As well as writing novels and screenplays, Michael now helps clients such as Unilever, Brandwatch, Cint and eBay develop their brands, people and businesses by harnessing the power of story.