The Sugar Man
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  • Published: 5 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9781405936286
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384
Categories:

The Sugar Man

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
9 Sep 2025
EBook
5 Jun 2025
Audiobook
5 Jun 2025
Hardback
5 Jul 2025
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Can a battle-scarred detective with chilling secrets seize her only chance of redemption in this gripping mystery from a talented voice in crime fiction

Dakota’s world broke in two the day her best friend Flora was murdered – and Dakota has never been able to confess her own dark secret about that day.

Years later, and now a detective, Dakota is struggling to hide her trauma. At a crossroads, she is taken aback to be assigned a case back in her home town. A case that has uncanny echoes of Flora – and a connection to the same nearby Amish-like community, whose faithful flock might just be hiding a murderer.

Dakota’s job needs her to unmask a serial killer. But her heart just needs to finally find out what happened to her best friend…
  • Published: 5 June 2025
  • ISBN: 9781405936286
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384
Categories:

About the author

Nicolás Obregón

British born of a Spanish father and a French mother, Nicolás Obregón grew up between London and Madrid. As a travel writer, Nicolás has had an extensive experience of Japan, but the beginning of his fascination with the country came from watching Japanese cartoons as a young boy. The inspiration for Blue Light Yokohama is easy to mark. During his first trip to Japan, Nicolás came across an article about a real-life crime which was to haunt him. Sixteen years after this atrocity, the case remains unsolved. Nicolás Obregón is a graduate of the acclaimed Birkbeck Creative Writing Masters course and a former bookseller for Waterstones.

portrait photo of Nicolás Obregón

Also by Nicolás Obregón

Unknown Male
Sins As Scarlet
Blue Light Yokohama
See all

Praise for The Sugar Man

Praise for Nicolás Obregón

A masterpiece

Jeffery Deaver

I'm awestruck

A. J. Finn

A dark, brutal ride

Anthony Horowitz

Truly heart-rending

Daily Express

Brooding and intricately woven, The Sugar Man delivers a rich tapestry of characters and a deliciously claustrophobic small town setting. Addictive and oh so clever, this book is a masterclass in plotting and I inhaled it in two greedy gulps.

Ali Land, bestelling author of Good Me Bad Me

With a nod to the classic film Witness, The Sugar Man finds hardbitten cop Dakota Finch on the trail of a serial killer hiding in an insular religious community back in a place – and a past – she thought she had left behind. An unflinching and mesmerizing small town crime story.

Vaseem Khan 

Nail-bitingly compelling and utterly engrossing, The Sugar Man keeps you turning the pages as worlds, pasts and secrets collide.

Tim Glister

With The Sugar Man, Obregón delivers a deft and riveting mystery that I genuinely struggled to put down. This one will haunt me for a long time.

Anna Bailey

How exquisitely rare to read a novel as original as Nicolas Obregón’s latest: a profoundly spooky thriller soaked in honey and horror, sugar and shivers, from a storyteller far too bold to write an ordinary sentence. Every turned page feels like a step taken closer towards something deep, dark, and irresistible. For readers of folkloric suspense (think The Wicker Man or Lucy Foley’s marvelous The Midnight Feast), for fans of flinty, fascinating heroines, for anyone who admires rich, risky world-building on the scale of Twin Peaks — take a trip to Nectar. This is a good one.

A.J. Finn

Very well plotted, and a very good read

The Critic