About The Book

Time is running out for detective James Dent. After having spent a year on the trail of the missing British rock star Billy K, he and his team have exhausted every lead. His relentless search has already cost him both his family and his home, but Dent decides to go it alone. Abandoning his job as head of the Missing Persons Bureau, Dent boards a plane to Australia with little other than a page torn from Show Me the Sky, the 1834 journal of a Fijian missionary—the book Billy K was reading when he vanished.

Dent has no idea how outlandish his journey will become. From the love letter of a stranded motorcyclist in central Australia to the back streets and brothels of Mombasa, Dent’s frenzied search leads him across continents and into a past long forgotten. As Dent begins to piece these parts of the puzzle together with Billy’s disappearance, he recalls his own past as a teenage fugitive, considering why a man might walk away from his own life, and leaving him to wonder if he is trailing a man, a ghost, or himself.

Somewhere between adventure story, historical voyage, and a quest for self-discovery, Show Me the Sky is an ambitiously crafted debut novel bringing four riveting narrative threads together into an unforgettable ride.

Praise

“Like a four-part harmony, Hogg balances these voices, strengthening the book’s message of staying true to one’s roots.” —Sunday Herald (Scotland)

“[A] subtle and clever novel . . . each voice is different and distinct. . . . The whole is plotted so artfully that I had to re-read sections to pick out the author’s carefully scattered clues, before working out what finally happened, and closing the book with a deep sigh of satisfaction.” —The Big Issue (UK)