Some mysteries begin with a missing person or a concealed crime. Original Echoes begins with something even more unsettling: the possibility that an entire community has been made to forget.
Through an atmospheric journey across two defining eras, J J Noad examines the terrifying consequences of controlling memory, behaviour, and personal choice.
The Machinery of Obedience
Blackpool in 1962 is a place where entertainment, history, and changing social attitudes exist side by side. Beneath the celebrated Winter Gardens, however, a secret government operation is preparing to revive a Victorian experiment with extraordinary capabilities.
Project EUNOMIA has been presented as a programme for encouraging public calm. Its researchers are studying an apparatus that uses sound, environmental influence, and suggestion to shape human behaviour. The machine could make obedience feel voluntary, giving authorities a way to direct people without openly forcing them.
Frederick “Fred” Langley is sent to evaluate the project. His background in wartime intelligence has made him observant and cautious, while his later work as a journalist has strengthened his instinct for following hidden connections. He understands how reassuring official language can conceal dangerous intentions.
At first, Fred’s responsibilities seem limited to watching the research and reporting his findings. The files soon reveal serious inconsistencies. Participants in previous trials have gone missing. Memories have changed. Written records conflict with the world Fred can see around him. His former commanding officer also appears reluctant to explain everything he knows.
The apparatus has remained active since the Victorian period, continuing to draw power beneath the building. Its history leads Fred to an unexplained performance staged at the Winter Gardens in 1895. The town recorded the occasion and then lost all collective memory of what happened.
A Journey Into Unstable History
When Project EUNOMIA conducts a major test, the apparatus opens a fracture in time. Fred is transported from 1962 into Blackpool in 1895, where recognizable landmarks offer only a faint sense of familiarity.
He’s stranded without a dependable identity or a clear way of returning home. Every decision carries risk, especially when the past itself seems capable of changing. Fred must rely on his intelligence experience, investigative discipline, and ability to read the motives of people around him.
His search brings him into contact with the Welcroft Society. Its wealthy and influential members are preparing to use the apparatus to establish their own version of moral and social order. They believe controlled behaviour will improve society, and their confidence gives little room for individual freedom.
A young woman named Clara Langdon occupies a vital place in their plans. Her voice is required to complete a ritual, though she hasn’t chosen to participate. Fred’s concern for Clara turns his investigation into a deeply personal challenge. Watching from a distance is no longer a responsible option.
As he learns more, Fred realizes that the machine is connected to an older power that the Welcroft Society cannot fully understand. Its members have disturbed something capable of reaching beyond thought and suggestion. Reality begins to shift. Streets change, names disappear, and people forget those who once mattered to them.
Dr Jeremy creates tension by removing the usual foundations of an investigation. Evidence can transform. Witnesses may lose their memories. A familiar place can suddenly have a different history. Fred’s greatest skill has always been his ability to observe, yet observation has limited value when reality refuses to remain stable.
The story’s movement between Victorian Blackpool and the Cold War era also gives the mystery a broad historical perspective. Both periods contain institutions seeking order during social change. The apparatus offers control, while its effects expose the human cost of surrendering personal choice.
About the Author
Dr Jeremy J Noad is the creator of the two-book Echoes Mysteries series, blending time travel with historical intrigue and psychological suspense. His first novel, Fractured Echoes, was named a finalist in the 2026 Page Turner Awards. It also received a silver medal for Best Debut Novel in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Years spent living in Lancashire helped Dr Jeremy develop a close familiarity with Blackpool. He draws upon the town’s theatres, piers, hotels, and layered history to create settings where earlier generations still seem present. Real locations lend authenticity to the fictional secrets unfolding beneath them.
Dr Jeremy works as a consultant in commercial practice and co-authored The Sales Professional’s Handbook series. His professional focus on evidence, assumptions, and informed decisions appears throughout his fiction, particularly when characters must question the reliability of their own knowledge.
Echoes That Refuse to Fade
As the second book in the series, Original Echoes uncovers Fred’s history and expands the mystery introduced in Fractured Echoes. Newcomers can begin here, while returning readers can discover how earlier events continue to influence the present.
Rich in atmosphere and unsettling ideas, the novel invites readers to consider what remains of identity when memory becomes vulnerable. Dr Jeremy delivers a compelling mystery in which remembering the past may be the only way to preserve the future.
We had the privilege of interviewing the author. Here are excerpts from the interview.
Hi, thank you so much for joining us today! Please introduce yourself and tell us what you do.
I’m Jeremy Noad, an author and commercial consultant based in England. I write fiction that blends time travel, historical mystery, and psychological suspense. My Echoes series is set largely in Blackpool and explores what happens when the past begins to affect the present.
My debut novel, Fractured Echoes, introduces a mystery that reaches back to Victorian Blackpool. Original Echoes takes readers to 1962 and follows Fred Langley back to the events behind that mystery.
Please share your journey with our readers.
I spent many years living in Lancashire, and Blackpool became a place that stayed with me. Its history, architecture and changing identity gave me the setting for a story in which different periods could exist side by side.
Fractured Echoes was my debut novel, published in September 2025. Writing it meant building a story across the present day and 1895–96 while keeping the characters and the mystery at the centre. The response has been encouraging: the book received a silver medal in the Best Debut Novel category of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and became a finalist in the 2026 Page Turner Awards.
Original Echoes grew from a question I wanted to answer after the first book: how did Fred Langley become involved in these events, and what happened before the story readers already knew? Rather than simply repeat the first novel, I wanted to open another part of the world. The result is a story set in 1962, rooted in the nineteenth century, with a secret government project beneath the Winter Gardens.
The journey has also taught me that finishing a book and developing a series are different challenges. Each novel must work for the reader, while the wider story must remain consistent across time.
What are the strategies that helped you become successful in your journey?
I try to focus on the work rather than on the idea of success. Awards and reviews are welcome, but they come after the main task: writing a book that readers want to finish.
Research is one part of my approach. I use real places and historical detail to give the fiction a foundation, but I don’t want research to slow the story. The question is always whether a detail helps the reader understand the place, the character, or the mystery.
I also believe in testing assumptions. In my consulting work, I have learned to separate what we know from what we think we know. That carries into writing. A scene may make sense to the author because the author knows the whole story, but the reader only has what is on the page. Feedback and revision help expose those gaps.
The other lesson is to keep going. Writing a novel involves many decisions, and not every decision will be right the first time. I find it more useful to complete the work, assess what needs to change, and make progress than to wait for every sentence to be perfect.
Any message for our readers?
I would encourage readers to try stories that take them somewhere they would not normally go. Historical fiction and time travel can offer more than a visit to another period. They can make us think about how people lived, what they believed, and how much our own lives depend on events that came before us.
If you enjoy mysteries that unfold across time, I hope you will visit the world of Fractured Echoes and Original Echoes. You do not need to have read the first book to enter the second, although each adds to the other.
Most of all, I hope the stories leave you with questions. What would you do if you discovered that something you believed about your past was wrong? And if you had the chance to change what happened, would you take it?
Thank you so much for giving us your precious time! We wish you all the best for your journey ahead!
