Not a police procedural. A crime series about the people trapped inside consequences.
My debut novel, SVETTIE, is the first book in CAGED, a series of interconnected standalone crime novels set across a single night in Tiger Bay.
Sent to kill her Serbian bosses, trafficked Ukrainian cocaine dealer Svettie, finds them already dead and claims the credit. Taking over their operation is her only chance of buying freedom for herself and the people she loves. But when her first shipment disappears, she has twenty-four hours to recover it before the cartel kills them all.
Set against the backdrop of a city closing in on itself, SVETTIE follows one woman's desperate attempt to stay alive as rival gangs circle, loyalties fracture and every bad choice creates another.
One night. No clean choices.
CAGED
Kathy Saxondale
Crime novelist writing Celtic noir set in modern Tiger Bay, Cardiff.
CAGED is a character-driven Celtic noir series set across one night in Tiger Bay, Cardiff.
Each novel follows a different protagonist caught inside the same expanding crisis. The books stand alone, but together they reveal how violence, power, silence and survival ripple through a city and the people forced to live with the consequences.
An ongoing crime series
Books
Across the CAGED series, ordinary lives are pulled into an unfolding night of threat and consequence. Every character believes they’re choosing the safest option.
No one is.
Rather than focusing on procedural investigation or set-piece violence, the books examine how harm is framed and how people respond when survival comes at a cost.
SVETLANA
Book One
When local crime bosses disappear, and a major cocaine shipment vanishes, Svettie moves quickly to contain the fallout.
As the night tightens around her, alliances fracture, threats multiply, and every attempt to keep control creates new risks.
Set over a single night in Tiger Bay, Svettie follows a woman navigating criminal pressure where violence is less a sudden act than a constant condition, and survival depends on choosing which damage can be lived with.
Status: Manuscript complete.
BERNIE
Book Two
Bernie was a detective once. Recently ousted from the police under a cloud, she has just joined a private investigation firm, trying to prove she still belongs on the right side of the line while the system she left behind continues to close in.
She is already under scrutiny when a scream cuts through her sign-off, pulling her back into a situation she knows will cost her. As the incident is rapidly classified and repackaged, Bernie finds herself caught between the demands of her new employers, the expectations of her former colleagues, and the quiet, escalating threat of losing her child.
Bernie is a novel about threat and consequence, where every attempt to act responsibly narrows the options, and survival depends on knowing when to comply, when to resist, and when to stay silent.
Status: Manuscript complete; in revision.
Book Three
For decades, Patricia has kept everything running. The house. The peace. The lies. Her life is survivable because she absorbs the damage.
When harm enters her home and shatters the fragile order she’s maintained, Patricia is forced to choose between holding everything together and letting it fall.
Status: In progress.
On The Work
I write pressure-driven noir crime fiction.
These are stories where violence rarely announces itself. Instead, it gathers. Waits. Is deferred, implied, mislabelled, or quietly absorbed, while the real danger emerges from the choices people make inside systems that reward compliance, punish error, and mistake silence for stability.
These are not stories about restoring order or uncovering heroes.
They are about people who keep showing up late, under-resourced, and already judged. About weather, waiting, class, and quiet humiliations. About what it takes to keep functioning when the damage is not a rupture, but a condition.
About the author
Kathy Saxondale is a crime novelist based on the Welsh border. Her work explores power, silence, and consequence, particularly where women are navigating forces that do not forgive mistakes, from institutions and criminal networks to family ties and the cultural values they are conditioned to respect.
Her CAGED series follows different women drawn into the same night of events, examining what it takes to survive once consequence becomes unavoidable.
Kathy is currently completing subsequent novels in the CAGED series and expanding the Tiger Bay universe.
