The Assassin

by D.A. Baden, Matt Coles (Narrator)

Eight people in a citizen’s jury, discussing the most important challenge in the history of humanity – how to save ourselves from the looming climate crisis. Exciting new solutions are proposed, each with their own champions and detractors. What they decide will affect us all. But they all have their own issues to deal with, and what is more, one of them has a hidden agenda. Who is the assassin and who are they there to kill?

Audible Audio

Published October 7, 2025

About the author

I work in the area of sustainability and climate change, and the more you know the scarier it is. Like the sun, you can’t look too closely at it, but face to one side, you make your way, because in fact, it’s easy to put everything right. All the solutions are right here, they just have to catch on. Walking lightly and mindfully upon the earth is so doable. I started writing as therapy, with green solutions as the main ingredient, stories to soothe my soul. Then my characters and their stories took over centre stage, leaving the green solutions to season the stew.

I set up the series of free Green Stories writing competitions in 2018 to inspire writers to create positive visions of what a sustainable society might look like, to tell stories that showcase solutions, not just problems. Habitat Man began as an effort to illustrate what a solution-based approach might look like, and then took on a life of its own. At my characters’ insistence, I’m now working on the sequel.

My day job is Professor of Sustainable Practice at the University of Southampton. In addition to my academic publications, I wrote the script for a musical Fidel that was performed in London in 2016, and have written three other screenplays (Knickers, World Cup Wendy and Fidel Castro: My New Boyfriend).

Habitat Man is my first novel. Thank you to all the wonderful people, projects and organisations that inspired this work of mostly fiction. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I have since written another novel: 'The Philosopher and the Assassin' - campus novel, meets whodunnit and have edited two anthologies and am working on another novel and a non-fiction book: A Jigsaw To Save The World, which is being released chapter by chapter as LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relati...

Reviews

[Hákon Gunnarsson]

I’ve now read two books by D.A. Baden back to back, this one and Habitat Man. Both of them deal with our climate crisis, ecological issues, and related issues. In The Assassin we follow eight people who are called in to a citizen’s jury to discuss how to save us and our planet from our climate crisis.

What Habitat Man does so well is to weave these issues into the story, while The Assassin doesn’t quite manage that. It feels like it’s preaching to the converted, which would include me among others, but I still feel it would have been better if it had been closer to Habitat Man.

Interestingly, these two are related in more than one way. There are characters that are in both stories. The Assassin does get more information across despite being shorter, but that is kind of the problem. Still, I did enjoy it and the ending is quite understandable.

[Reader]

The Assassin completely caught me off guard—in the best way. I thought I was picking up a fast-paced thriller (which it totally is), but what I found was a smart, morally complex story that really made me think.

The Assassin completely caught me off guard—in the best way. I thought I was picking up a fast-paced thriller but what I found was a smart, darkly comic story that really made me think.

[D.A. Baden]

A classic locked room murder - great fun!