The Cause by Trevor Negus

Tom Naylor Trilogy – book three

🌟 Review Note:

This review is provided as part of the Virtual Book Tour hosted by Zooloo’s Book Tours which runs 13 – 19 October 2025. Follow along with the Book Tour Schedule. This review is for The Cause, the third, and final, part of the trilogy.

My sincere thanks to Zooloo’s Book Tours and Inkubator Books for inviting me to be part of this book tour and for providing a digital copy of the Tom Naylor Trilogy by Trevor Negus.

As always, this review reflects my honest thoughts.

About the book

Tom Naylor – a good cop with a deadly skill.

Nottingham 1990. Ex-paratrooper Tom Naylor is a sniper in the Special Operations Unit, the dedicated firearms response teams of the Nottinghamshire Police.

Each book in this gripping trilogy focuses on a single case –

In Two Wrongs, Naylor’s unit combats the warring drug gangs who are fighting for control of the city.

In The Root of All Evil, Naylor infiltrates a lethal gang of armed robbers, some of
whom are also ex-military.

In The Cause, Naylor plays a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with an elite IRA sniper who is on a mission to strike at the very heart of the British establishment.

Written by a former police firearms specialist, the Naylor trilogy is a must-read, combining absolutely riveting storytelling with an insider’s eye for authentic detail.

The Tom Naylor Trilogy by Trevor Negus
Published 21 September 2025 by Inkubator Books

You can find the book on Amazon and Goodreads

Who is Trevor Negus?

Trevor Negus is a retired Police Officer who spent 30 years working with Nottinghamshire Police. He worked both inner city and rural beats in uniform and spent the entire duration of the Miners’ Strike of 1984 on a Police Support Unit.

He then spent six years as an authorised firearms officer and was a sniper on the force’s Special Operations Unit. The last eleven years of his Police career were spent as a detective on the CID, where he was involved in numerous murder enquiries. During his time on the CID he was trained as a specialist interviewer, involved in the planning and interviews of murder suspects.

Trevor’s website can be found at https://www.trevornegus-author.com/

You can follow Trevor on social media over on Instagram and Facebook

My Review

The Cause is, without question, the strongest and most gripping part of the trilogy, and it carries everything forward with absolute precision and intensity. Picking up in direct continuation from the previous instalments, it doesn’t waste a moment easing you back in — it drops you straight into the escalating pressure surrounding Tom Naylor and the Special Operations Unit, and the stakes feel higher than ever.

The realism remains one of this series’ greatest strengths, but in this final instalment it feels even more heightened. The threat level, the planning, the constant readiness — it’s intense, and you can feel that intensity in every decision made and every moment of waiting. The writing is taut, sharp and grounded, and there’s a quiet tension running through the book that kept me fully absorbed from start to finish. It’s not just dramatic — it feels entirely believable, and that makes it all the more powerful.

What really stands out in The Cause is how deeply it made me think about the people behind roles like this. It’s one thing to read about elite officers operating behind the scenes; it’s another to sit with the reality that these are individuals who walk into danger most of us will never even be aware of. Their lives — and the lives of their families — are constantly overshadowed by uncertainty and risk. This book really drove that home for me. The sacrifices made, often silently and without recognition, are staggering. I genuinely don’t know how people do this job and carry the weight of it day after day, protecting others who may never know their names or realise the danger they’ve been shielded from.

The storyline itself is completely compelling, and although it brings in new elements and ramps up the threat in a different way, it still feels firmly rooted in everything that came before. The continuity is excellent and the tone never falters. The emotional undercurrent is stronger here too — there’s a real sense of what is at stake, not only professionally but personally, and I found myself even more invested in the outcome than I expected.

This is an easy 5-star read, and if the scale could go higher, it would deserve it. The detail is masterfully handled, the characters are solid and believable, and the tension builds in such a natural, purposeful way. It’s the perfect conclusion to an exceptional trilogy, and it’s left me with huge admiration for the real-world counterparts of characters like Tom Naylor — the people who put themselves in harm’s way to protect others, often without thanks, acknowledgement or even awareness from the public they serve.

An outstanding finish to a truly impressive series.

This review may also appear on my social media and selected book platforms. All links are correct at the time of posting.

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