The inquisitor - Mark Allen Smith

On September 6, 1995, Geiger was born an almost full-grown man of indeterminate age when a Greyhound driver shook him by the shoulder as he slept in a seat in the last row of a bus that had just pulled into New York's Port Authority Terminal. Surviving by instinct, and an innate ability to detect truth amongst lies, Geiger established himself as an expert in Information Retrieval. Which is to say: torture.

Almost devoid of human emotion, he will stop at nothing to get the job done. His methods range from the psychologically complex to straightforward brutality. His clients are referred to him from international corporations, government agencies and organised crime; his skills are in worldwide demand.

Geiger only has one rule: he will never work on a child. So when a client presents Geiger with a twelve-year-old boy his instinct is to walk away. But the alternative - the unknown horror that may await the boy elsewhere - is too awful to contemplate.

In accepting this assignment in an attempt to save the boy, he will also uncover his own history, no matter how torturous that proves to be…