As an award-winning senior reporter and Australia’s #1 true crime writer, James Phelps was always going to venture into the world of fiction writing. With his debut novel, The Inside Man, out now, Phelps has delivered an engrossing action thriller that fans of Matthew Reilly, Lee Child and David Baldacci will love.
The Inside Man focuses on the story of a convicted murderer who can’t remember the night of his crime and is the key to preventing a massacre.
“Once a promising engineer in the army, Riley Jax lost everything in a single night when he killed a man – an act he cannot remember.”
Phelps began his career as an overnight police‐rounds reporter and is known for his bestselling prison series, including Australia’s Hardest Prison, Australia’s Most Murderous Prison, and Australia’s Toughest Prisons.
His most recent books are Australian Heist (2018), a dramatic retelling of the true story behind Australia’s largest gold robbery, and Australian Code Breakers (2020), a gripping account of how Australian cryptographers helped bring about the most vital Allied naval victory of World War I.
The Inside Man is out now through Harper Collins Publishers and available for purchase through retailers and online. Check out the Prologue from the novel and then pick up a copy from for just $26.25 over at Booktopia.
Read an excerpt from The Inside Man
Holsworthy Army Base, Sydney, NSW, Australia
RILEY Jax woke up with a gun in his hand and a body on his floor.
Bee-beep. Bee-beep. Bee-beep.
He turned off the alarm on his wristwatch.
6 am. A Monday.
There was a sharp, unfamiliar metallic taste in his mouth, his head was fuzzy and he was coated in a fine sheen of cold sweat.
He eased himself up out of his military cot bed and forced himself to study the body on the floor.
It was a clean kill: the dead man had taken one bullet to the brain and another to the heart, at close range. He was dressed like a civilian, but could have been ex-military from his build, his buzzcut, his neatly pressed clothing and his shiny boots.
Jax had never laid eyes on him before – he knew that for sure because he never forgot a face. Never.
Jax tried to recall the events of the previous night, but the thread was broken – he had lost almost ten hours. He couldn’t remember anything after 8.14 pm.
Nothing. Not a thing. Everything black.
He remembered leaving the mess hall after dinner at 7.04
It had been a balmy evening, the temperature still high after the heat of the day. A couple of the guys had been sitting around outside. He’d stopped and chatted with them for a few minutes, not because he wanted to but because it was expected.
After that he’d walked into his army-issue apartment – little more than an oversized bedroom with a small adjoining bathroom containing just a toilet and basin – grabbed a towel, his toiletry bag and his thongs before walking back out. The floodlights had been on but not yet needed.
The base, a haphazard assortment of buildings bedded on concrete and bordered by barbed wire and bush, had been quiet. It always was on a Sunday night, the last night of freedom before the week’s first crack-of-dawn roll call; most of the soldiers would have been at the pub. They wouldn’t start stumbling in until 10 pm. Some wouldn’t be back then. They would have just enough time to change out of their perfume soaked civvies and make muster.
Jax had only walked past two men on his way to the shower block. He’d nodded at them before entering and showering on his own. Towel tied around his waist, thongs squeaking as they were worked by wet feet, he saw nobody after his shit, shower and shave.
His memory became clouded after that, though he did remember returning to his room. He recalled pulling on boxer shorts and a singlet, checking his phone to find out if Nikki had called and, seeing she hadn’t, grabbing a book – A Theory of Human Motivation by Abraham Maslow – and collapsing into his cot for an early night. And that’s where his memory stopped, at 8.14 pm.
Since then: nothing. Not a thing. Everything black.
Instead of the Maslow, he was now gripping a Glock. His Glock. Two rounds short of being fully loaded. He had no memory of firing his gun. He had no memory of loading it. He had no memory of even signing it out. The book he had gone to bed with was back on the shelf. He noted that it was sitting next to another title by the same author.
The fuzziness he’d felt on waking had been replaced by a hangover-like headache. The metallic taste in his mouth remained: more bile than blood, he noted, as he turned his attention back to the body. To the dead man on his floor.
Clean-shaven with a square jaw chiselled as if from rock, the deceased male was partially propped up against the wall opposite where Jax slept. The hole in the plasterboard above the body was the size and shape of his head. Eyes open and pupils enlarged, the dead man sat in a pool of blood. His fingers were splayed and stiff. Rigor mortis. Dead for at least four hours.
Jax scanned his room. One entry and exit point. He then looked at the body. He considered the victim’s path. He considered the killer’s path. He stood and shuffled left, stopping when he reached the adjacent wall. He hugged the plasterboard as he tiptoed along the carpet. Keeping to the base of the wall to avoid contaminating the scene, he was soon close enough to touch the body. He extended his arm and placed the back of his index finger on the victim’s neck.
The man was cold – but still warmer than the room. Dead for at least four hours but no more than eight. He looked at the man’s eyes. He did not have a flashlight but knew the oversized pupils would not react if he did. It was, however, bright enough for him to note the whites were lightly bloodshot and slightly yellow in the corner. The Kevorkian sign. He had only read about it once, but that was enough for him to remember.
He would need a thermometer and access to the man’s anus to establish the exact time of death, but the rigor mortis, his touch test and the opacity of the eyes told him that the man had expired sometime between 10 pm and 4 am. He retraced his steps and returned to the bed.
Jax turned his attention to the blood spatter. Gun still in his hand, standing beside his bed, he studied his walls and then his ceiling. He did the maths, taking into account the man’s size, what he knew about speed and impact – which was more than most – and the specs of the only weapon in the room.
It all added up.
The size of the hole in the wall, the blood spatter, the position of the body and the time of death all indicated the man had been killed right here, in this room. The numbers did not lie. While blood could be flicked and bodies could be repositioned, figures could not be fudged.
The dead man had been standing in the centre of Jax’s room when the first round had been fired into his skull. The blood spatter on the ceiling and the entry wounds on the corpse indicated the round had struck with force, the impact of the kill-shot snapping the man’s head back and to the left. He’d been falling when the second round had hit him in the heart.
Thumping into the left side of his chest, the force of that shot changed the body’s path – sending it slightly to the right. The wall broke his fall and left him propped up. Sitting. The blood spatter on the wall above the victim’s head had come from the exit wound caused by that second bullet. Detectives would find one bullet lodged in the wall behind the body and the other in the back of the corpse’s brain.
Jax looked back at his gun. His Glock. At the murder weapon.
He suddenly felt cold. Numb. His mind went quiet. He began to sway as he looked at the ground. His boots snapped him out of the trance. They were shined to perfection and tied tight, but he could not remember putting them on. Book in hand, he had flicked off his thongs and swung his bare feet onto the bed.
Jax slapped himself in the face. It didn’t help. He still couldn’t remember putting his boots on. Nor could he remember killing a man. And that was impossible. For Riley Jax remembered everything. He had never forgotten a thing in his life.
Until now.
This is an edited extract from The Inside Man by James Phelps, published by HarperCollins and available in paperback and e-book now.
