The Boy on the Train

Silently, digitally, a boy takes apart your family

Tom''s a regular teenager – sullen, anxious, super-smart, feeling safe within his bedroom and wedded to his screen.

On a packed train, a London commodities trader gets under his skin.

The trader''s got a fine wife, two kids, a yappy dog, big house, annual bonus. Tom hacks him. The trader''s hardware becomes stuffed with dangerous, damaging images. Call it collateral damage.

Hacking is what Tom does. He''s got control of the keyboards of key players in the fossil fuel industry. If he doesn''t bring down the grid, who will?

Roads and trainlines lead the main players to a violent confrontation in the brutalist surrounds of London''s Barbican Centre. Government agents work to prevent a global blackout. Tom''s set to save the planet.

Who will win?

"Sinuously written, subtly subversive" - Beatrice HitchmanSilently, digitally, a boy takes apart your familyA gripping techno-thriller that fuses Patricia Highsmith's psychological intensity with urgent climate activism. When teenage hacker Tom Snelling encounters coal broker Steve McInnes on a train, a chance collision sparks a devastating game of digital cat-and-mouse. Tom, a reclusive coding prodigy driven by eco-fury, systematically dismantles Steve's life—planting child pornography, triggering financial chaos, and exposing the moral rot beneath corporate respectability. But Tom is being watched by Mel, a gender-fluid intelligence operative, while MI5's shadowy "Glyph" operation secretly manipulates them both. As Tom's algorithms threaten to collapse the global fossil fuel industry, the question becomes: can one brilliant, damaged boy save the planet by burning down the system—or will his digital vengeance consume everything, including himself?

• | Author: Martin Goodman
• | Publisher: Barbican Press
• | Publication Date: Oct 07, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781917352079
• | ISBN-10: 1917352077