Patriot — A Colyton, East Devon Thriller
A Brett Orchard political thriller rooted in a quiet Devon town
where the past refuses to stay buried....
Some places look peaceful from the outside.
Colyton, in East Devon, is one of those places.
With its historic streets, old cottages, surrounding countryside and quiet position close to Seaton, Beer and Lyme Bay, it can feel like a town slightly removed from the noise of the modern world. Beautiful. Familiar. Safe.
But in Patriot, that sense of safety is only the beginning.
Brett Orchard’s thriller opens in the deceptively peaceful world of Rebecca Grey, a wife, mother and familiar face in local life. To the people around her, Rebecca appears settled, dependable and ordinary. She has built a quiet existence in Colyton, wrapped around family, routine, school runs, village life and the comfort of a home that seems to belong perfectly to the East Devon landscape.
But Rebecca’s life is not what it appears to be.
Beneath the calm surface lies a past she has spent years trying to bury. A past involving power, secrets, influence, danger and people who do not forget. When a stranger appears, a message arrives, and an old name resurfaces, Rebecca is pulled back towards a world she thought she had escaped.
What begins in a quiet Devon town soon opens into something far larger: a tense, modern political thriller about loyalty, identity, corruption, control and the frightening speed at which a country can change.
Patriot asks a chilling question:
What happens when the unimaginable no longer feels impossible?
A thriller where Colyton is more than a setting
Colyton is not simply a backdrop in Patriot. It is part of the book’s atmosphere.
The town gives the story its first illusion: peace.
Its old streets, rural surroundings and close-knit rhythms create the perfect contrast with Rebecca’s hidden life. On the surface, this is a place of school mornings, local gossip, familiar faces and countryside calm. But that quietness makes the tension sharper. In a place where everyone notices everything, secrets become dangerous things to carry.
That is what makes Colyton such a powerful location for the novel.
It is beautiful, but not empty.
Peaceful, but not naïve.
Small, but not insignificant.
In Patriot, East Devon becomes the unlikely starting point for a story with national consequences. A quiet town close to Seaton, Beer and Lyme Bay becomes the place where old secrets begin to stir, where hidden networks awaken, and where one woman is forced to decide how far she will go to protect the life she has built.
The story
Rebecca Grey has worked hard to become ordinary.
She has a family, a home, a place in the community and a life carefully shaped around respectability. In Colyton, she can be the woman she wants people to see: calm, capable, warm and unremarkable.
But Rebecca was not always Rebecca Grey.
Years earlier, she lived in a world of wealth, secrets and influence, moving among people whose names opened doors and whose mistakes could destroy careers. She knew how power worked. She knew how men protected themselves. She knew how information could be more dangerous than any weapon.
She left that world behind.
Or thought she had.
When her past comes knocking, Rebecca is forced to confront the truth that some secrets do not fade with time. They wait. They watch. And eventually, they return.
As an old threat pulls her back into the shadows, Rebecca discovers that the danger is not only personal. Her former life, her missing friend, the corridors of power and the fragile state of modern Britain are all connected in ways she does not yet understand.
To survive, she must become the person she buried.
To protect her family, she may have to risk everything.
And to stop what is coming, she will have to face a conspiracy far bigger than the life she built in Colyton.
A modern political thriller with a very British fear at its heart
Patriot is a thriller about the speed of change.
It is about how quickly the familiar can slip away. How fear can be used. How loyalty can be twisted. How public anger, political ambition, media manipulation and private power can combine into something frighteningly plausible.
This is not a distant fantasy world. It is a story built close enough to reality to feel uncomfortable.
At its heart is a simple but unsettling idea: countries do not always change with a dramatic crash. Sometimes they change through pressure, distraction, fear, compromise and the slow acceptance of things people once thought could never happen.
That is what gives Patriot its edge.
It is not only about secrets from Rebecca’s past. It is about the future she fears. For her family. For the people she loves. For the country around her.
Why East Devon matters to Patriot
Brett Orchard’s writing is often rooted in place, and Patriot begins in one of the places closest to his heart.
Colyton, East Devon, gives the novel its emotional grounding. The surrounding landscape, the nearby coast, the connection to Seaton, Beer and Lyme Bay, and the sense of a town where history lingers all help shape the mood of the book.
The contrast is what makes it work.
A quiet Devon home.
A carefully built family life.
An old town where people think they know one another.
A hidden past powerful enough to tear it all apart.
That is the world of Patriot.
For readers who know Colyton, East Devon or the Lyme Bay area, the book carries an extra layer of recognition. For readers discovering the place for the first time, it offers something equally powerful: a beautiful, atmospheric setting that becomes central to the tension of the story.
This is a thriller with global stakes, but its soul begins in East Devon.
For readers who love…
Patriot is for readers who enjoy political thrillers, conspiracy fiction, espionage, strong female protagonists, hidden pasts, village secrets, government intrigue, modern British suspense, and stories where a peaceful place hides something much darker beneath the surface.
It is for readers who like thrillers that feel cinematic, fast-moving and atmospheric.
It is for readers who enjoy the contrast between ordinary family life and extraordinary danger.
It is for readers who want a story that grips, unsettles and leaves them wondering how much of it really could happen.
The Colyton gallery
The photographs on this page capture the real East Devon atmosphere behind Patriot.
They are not intended as a literal guide to every scene in the book. Instead, they reflect the world that helped shape it: Colyton’s old streets, quiet corners, surrounding countryside and the wider East Devon landscape close to Seaton, Beer and Lyme Bay.
This is the visual mood of Patriot: peaceful on the surface, full of history, and just shadowed enough to make you wonder what might be hidden behind the next door.
About Brett Orchard
Brett Orchard is a writer, broadcaster, podcaster and creator behind DaysLikeThis.Life, a UK Content Creator Awards finalist family brand.
After years in radio, live events and storytelling, Brett now writes books, records podcasts and creates digital media shaped by family life, nostalgia, place and atmosphere. His work is closely connected to Bristol, East Devon, Lyme Bay and the family’s wider storytelling world.
With Patriot, Brett moves into darker, more adult territory: a political thriller rooted in Colyton, East Devon, but driven by questions that feel much bigger than one town.
How fragile is normal life?
How quickly can a country change?
And what would you do if the past you buried became the only thing that could save the future?
Read Patriot
If you enjoy atmospheric thrillers, Devon-set fiction, political suspense, hidden identities, powerful secrets and stories that begin quietly before opening into something much larger, Patriot is waiting.
A peaceful East Devon town.
A woman with a buried past.
A conspiracy reaching into the heart of power.
And a question that refuses to let go:
What if the unimaginable really did happen?
Discover Patriot by Brett Orchard.
