David Leadbeater

David Leadbeater builds action thrillers around recurring teams, historic objects, and conspiracies that move across national borders. The Midnight Conspiracy is the third Joe Mason novel, following The Vatican Secret and The Demon Code. Avon issued the book in 2023. Former MI5 operative Joe Mason accepts a security job involving a rare golden basin, then finds the intended recipient dead. The discovery draws his team into a contest with the Guild of Night, whose interest in the relic links the modern chase to religious history. Leadbeater had already reached a large action fiction readership through the Matt Drake books and the Relic Hunters sequence. The first Relic Hunters adventure won the inaugural Kindle Storyteller Award in 2017. Joe Mason brings the same focus on puzzles, pursuit, and group dynamics to a traditionally published series. Leadbeater has written more than forty novels, and later Mason adventures carry the sequence beyond The Midnight Conspiracy. His chapter momentum lets archaeological clues, personal loyalties, and physical danger develop together without slowing the central investigation.