Vancouver, BC - 7th Oct, 2026: What happens when the systems people trust to keep society connected suddenly become weapons against them? That question drives Broken Lines, the newly released action-adventure novel by Canadian author Timothy W. Hamilton.
The novel begins with the deliberate severing of an undersea communications cable spanning the North Pacific Ocean, triggering widespread outages across parts of Canada and the United States. As communications fail and established safeguards prove ineffective, the disruption becomes the opening move in a far larger conflict involving political power, international intelligence, organized violence and a mysterious figure known as Emperor Baroque.
At the center is Carver Raines, a Canadian tradesman returning to Toronto with Tony Crenshaw, the older family friend who helped raise him and taught him his trade. Carver is already grieving his mother when Tony is fatally attacked at Pearson International Airport. Instead of receiving help, Carver becomes a suspect, forcing him into a flight from authorities while he tries to understand why the people closest to him have become targets.
That personal loss gives the novel its emotional center. Carver’s investigation gradually reveals that his mother, Tony and his father were connected to a history far larger than he understood. Dalton, an ally from Tony’s past, tells Carver that his father helped his mother and Tony escape London and that the danger surrounding them has not ended.
Timothy also places family inheritance alongside political and technological instability. Knowledge, skills and memories pass between generations even as institutions fail around them. Carver’s relationship with Tony, who became an electrician after leaving academia and taught Carver the trade, becomes part of the legacy he must carry forward after Tony’s death.
The novel ultimately expands from a personal mystery into an international struggle involving attacks on communications infrastructure, intelligence agencies and an organization operating behind the figure of Emperor Baroque.
With Broken Lines, Hamilton places a family story inside a wider question confronting modern society. How much of civilization remains secure when the networks connecting people, institutions and nations can be disrupted? The result is an action-adventure narrative in which personal history and global consequences become inseparable.
Broken Lines is now available in print and digital formats at leading online bookstores.
