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In a word: Incline

When you first think of this word, it is with a slippery slope in mind.

I’ve been on a few of those in my time.

And while we’re on the subject, those inclines measured in degrees are very important if you want a train to get up and down the side of a mountain.

For the train, that’s an incline plane, the point where traction alone won’t get the iron horse up the hill.

Did I say ‘Iron Horse’?  Sorry, regressed there, back to the mid-1800s in the American West for a moment.

It’s not that important when it comes to trucks and cars, and less so if you like four-wheel driving; getting up near-vertical mountainsides often present a welcome challenge to the true enthusiast

But for the rest of us, not so much if you find yourself sliding in reverse uncontrollably into the bay.  I’m sure it’s happened more than once.

Then…

Are you inclined to go?

A very different sort of incline, ie to be disposed towards an attitude or desire.

An inclination, maybe, not to go four-wheel driving?

There is another, probably more obscure use of the word incline, and that relates to an elevated geological formation.  Not the sort of reference that crops up in everyday conversation at the coffee shop.

But, you never know.  Try it next time you have coffee and see what happens.

Featured

Writing about writing a book – Day 2

Hang about.  Didn’t I read somewhere you need to plan your novel, create an outline setting the plot points, and flesh out the characters?

I’m sure it didn’t say, sit down and start writing!

Time to find a writing pad, and put my thinking cap on.

I make a list, what’s the story going to be about? Who’s going to be in it, at least at the start?

Like a newspaper story, I need a who, what, when, where, and how.

Right now.

 

I pick up the pen.

 

Character number one:

Computer nerd, ok, that’s a little close to the bone, a computer manager who is trying to be everything at once, and failing.  Still me, but with a twist.  Now, add a little mystery to him, and give him a secret, one that will only be revealed after a specific set of circumstance.  Yes, I like that.

We’ll call him Bill, ex-regular army, a badly injured and repatriated soldier who was sent to fight a war in Vietnam, the result of which had made him, at times, unfit to live with.

He had a wife, which brings us to,

Character number two:

Ellen, Bill’s ex-wife, an army brat and a General’s daughter, and the result of one of those romances that met disapproval for so many reasons.  It worked until Bill came back from the war, and from there it slowly disintegrated.  There are two daughters, both by the time the novel begins, old enough to understand the ramifications of a divorce.

Character number three:

The man who is Bill’s immediate superior, the Services Department manager, a rather officious man who blindly follows orders, a man who takes pleasure in making others feel small and insignificant, and worst of all, takes the credit where none is due.

Oops, too much, that is my old boss.  He’ll know immediately I’m parodying him.  Tone it down, just a little, but more or less that’s him.  Last name Benton.  He will play a small role in the story.

Character number four:

Jennifer, the IT Department’s assistant manager, a woman who arrives in a shroud of mystery, and then, in time, to provide Bill with a shoulder to cry on when he and Ellen finally split, and perhaps something else later on.

More on her later as the story unfolds.

So far so good.

What’s the plot?

Huge corporation plotting to take over the world using computers?  No, that’s been done to death.

Huge corporation, OK, let’s stop blaming the corporate world for everything wrong in the world.  Corporations are not bad people, people are the bad people.  That’s a rip off cliché, from guns don’t kill people, people kill people!  There will be guns, and there will be dead people.

There will be people hiding behind a huge corporation, using a part of their computer network to move billions of illegally gained money around.  That’s better.

Now, having got that, our ‘hero’ has to ‘discover’ this network, and the people behind it.

All we need now is to set the ball rolling, a single event that ‘throws a cat among the pigeons’.

Yes, Bill is on holidays, a welcome relief from the problems of work.  He dreams of what he’s going to do for the next two weeks.  The phone rings.  Benton calling, the world is coming to an end, the network is down.  He’s needed.  A few terse words, but he relents.

Pen in hand I begin to write.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

“Echoes From The Past”, the past doesn’t necessarily stay there


What happens when your past finally catches up with you?

…

Christmas is just around the corner, a time to be with family. For Will Mason, an orphan since he was fourteen, it is a time for reflection on what his life could have been, and what it could be.

Until a chance encounter brings back to life the reasons for his twenty years of self-imposed exile from a life only normal people could have. From that moment, Will’s life slowly starts to unravel, and it’s obvious to him that it’s time to move on.

This time, however, there is more at stake.

Will has broken his number one rule: don’t get involved.

With his nemesis, Eddie Jamieson, suddenly within reach, and a blossoming relationship with an office colleague, Maria, about to change everything, Will has to make a choice. Quietly leave, or finally, make a stand.

But as Will soon discovers, when other people are involved, there are going to be terrible consequences no matter what choice he makes.

…

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The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 28

Our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.

Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in.

…

I was escorted to a small room that adjoined the interview room, and I was separated from the main event by a one-way mirror.

It was a cliché, but not surprising.

The interrogation room was much the same as an office, with a table, two chairs, and on the side, a cabinet, closed up, an interesting addition to what might be called a boring room.

It was currently empty, and I was the only one in this small room, sitting at a counter, looking in.  In front of me was a stack of writing pads, pens and pencils.  I wondered if I was the only party that was about to observe Lallo and the new arrival.

Five minutes passed before the door to the room next door opened and a hooded man was led in.  His hands were cuffed, and his legs had chains, standard prisoner gear.  

From the man’s manner and body language, it appeared to me as though he was surprised he was being treated so badly, and was not forcefully resistant, but wasn’t making it easy for his captors.

He was asked to sit, and when he didn’t he was forced to sit, with some force, and then his hands were locked onto the metal bar at the table.  His legs were locked to a lower bar.  A precaution in case he decided to attack his interrogator.

One thing I knew for sure, this man would not give up information willingly.

Once he was secured, one guard took up station inside the door, and the other left.  That’s when Lallo made his appearance.  He came in, put a file on the desk, nodded to the guard who remove3d the hood, and then he sat.

I’d expected to see Lallo in full uniform.  He was not.  He was, if anything, dressed casually.  The man on the other side was in a cream suit, very crumpled and slightly stained as if he had not changed during the entire journey from capture to this room.

No doubt part of his conditioning.

“Mr Jacobi, that is your name isn’t it?”

The man stared at him sullenly.  I got the impression he was usually the one asking the questions, not the other way around.

The man lifted his head and stared straight at Lallo.  It was not a look I’d want to be on the end of, but Lallo, I suspect, had been on the end of a lot worse.  And a closer inspection of his face, and features, I noticed that someone had already started the harsher form of interrogation.

“You know this already.  I am an employee of the United States Government, your Government, and you will regret treating me like this.”

“That may be so, but you have failed to define what part of the Government it is you work for.  Is it the CIA?”

Another withering stare, followed by, “You people are so incompetent, the left-hand does not know what the right hand is doing.  I require a telephone so that I can contact my liaison, and this farce will stop, and you will be reprimanded very severely.”

“I seriously doubt anyone knows you are missing yet.  Maybe after a week or so, but we know you keep to yourself, and very few people know your business, a situation, I assure you, benefits us more than it benefits you.  So I will assume you are Jacobi.”

There was a knock on the door, and Monroe came in with a small box, handed it to Lallo, and then left again.

Lallo looked in the box, then pulled out a plastic evidence bag with a mobile phone in it, and put it on the table.  “This is the phone you use to call General Bahti, your contact inside the current government.  It seems it is not registered with a telephone network in your country, but another, shall we say neutral, country.

He reached into the box and pulled out another plastic evidence bag also with mobile phone in it.  “This phone,” he held it up, “is the one you use to talk to the, shall we call them the local resistance.  It’s so much nicer than calling them rebels.”

The man’s eyes followed each bag from the box to the table.  He was almost expressionless.

Then Lallo pulled out another bag, with another phone, “This is the phone which you make and receive calls from your American contact.  It is what we call a burner phone, and was given to you, we think, on a recent visit to this country, by that contact.  I am assuming this is the person you wish to call and who will stop this farce.”

If Lallo was expecting the man to break down there and then, he was sadly mistaken.  There was little if any movement in his expression, perhaps just enough for Lallo to assume he’d got the men behind the phones correct.  That he was basically unmoved at Lallo’s revelations told me this man had a resolve Lallo was going to find hard to shake.

Lallo took the third phone out of the evidence bag and pushed it across the table towards the man.  “You can call your contact now, and you can tell him I would like to speak to him.”

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2022

‘What Sets Us Apart’ – A beta reader’s view

There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?

A retired spy, well, not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a setup.

But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.

And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.

Susan is exactly the sort of woman to pique his interest.  Then, inexplicably, she disappears.  That might have been the end of it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex-boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum: find her or come back to work.

Nothing like an offer that’s a double-edged sword!

A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father, who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.

When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.

I’ve been told there’s a sequel in the works.

Bring it on!

…

The book can be purchased here:  http://amzn.to/2Eryfth

…

The Cinema of My Dreams – It ended in Sorrento – Episode 50

Arrival in Sorrento

…

We didn’t have to wait that long to see what our tail did, he simply sped up and drove off, perhaps satisfied he had been made, and knew we were going to ditch him before we got to our eventual destination.

It would be hard for him to guess where we were going, so that meant that he would arrange for someone to pick us up as we came into the city, or after.

After all, he knew what car I was travelling in, and he knew what we looked like.  Which is why we stopped briefly in Naples and changed cars and clothes.

Then, by a quirk of fate, we saw him again, parked on the side of the road, near Pompei, waiting.  He had been hidden behind several trucks, but at the last minute on of the trucks moved, and I saw the car.

And there he sat, not assuming we would be smart enough to change cars.  What was it Rodby said from time to time?  Good help is hard to find.

I had no doubt the moment he reported in, that other arrangements were not already underway.  If they were smart, they’d know what my destination was, the home of the Burkehardt’s up in the hills that overlooked the Mediterranean, with billion-dollar views, nestled in among the exclusive and very expensive resorts.

Cecelia had booked on and it was where she had been relaxing in what time she had away from surveillance.  She was at the hotel when I called, and we arrived there a half hour later.

I’d already forewarned her about my new shadow.

She met us down in the foyer, gave Francesca her ‘don’t mess with me, or else’ scowl, and then took us up to the room.  It was amazing, and I would probably never be able to afford to stay in a room, or place, like it if I had to pay for it myself.

Francesca was suitably impressed.  “How much had you got on your expense account.  I can barely buy a sandwich with mine.”

“Normally we don’t either, but this is a ‘by all means available’ mission.”

She gave me a blank look, and I didn’t have the time or inclination to explain it to her.  We would not be seeing her again after this.

“I trust your charges are behaving themselves selves and remaining anonymous,” I asked her, after sitting down with a bottle of wine and three glasses, and we’d all taken a separate chair each.

“No.  You didn’t expect them to stay in the room, despite the fact someone is trying to kill them.  I’m not their nursemaid.  They want to get killed they can.”

I frowned at her.  We were supposed to be keeping them alive.  I suppose learning they were fakes didn’t help.  Vittoria and Juliet weren’t, or at least I hope they weren’t, but the jury was still out on that.

I was going back to see them after I spoke to the Burkehardt matriarch.  Or maybe I would talk to Juliet again.  I couldn’t believe that everything I did seemed to involve her, and I was hoping the universe wasn’t trying to tell me something.

“Who are these people again,” Francesca asked.

“Didn’t you tell her?”  Cecelia looked at me.

“No.  Relevance?”

“None,” she looked at Francesca.  “A woman called Vittoria who was a maid at the house I’ve been watching for that last day or so and her daughter Juliet are supposed to be keeping a low profile.  It appears Juliet might be another direct descendant of the Count’s.  I’m surprised your employers didn’t tell you of her?”

“They mentioned the possibility of another heir.  They just didn’t know who or where she was.  She’s here, you say?”

“Yes.  I hope they’re safe, and, no, we’re not telling you where they are.  Not until we know your employers, whom I’m assuming are the Burkehardt’s, are not trying to kill her.”

“I assure you that neither am I, and I work for the investigations company, not the Burkehardt’s.  I can only take orders from my boss.  He was very clear about that.”

“Good.  I’d hate to have to shoot you because you lied.”

I could see she meant what she said.  I hoped Francesca did too.  She seemed to brush that threat aside.

“What about the countess?”

“That’s the bigger question, where is she?  We’d like to know so if you have any ideas, please share.  For this dynamic to work, you must be willing to share information.  It’s not going to be a one-way street.”

“So, you don’t know where the countess is?”

Cecelia looked at me. 

“Inquisitive little bugger, isn’t she?  Don’t make it so obvious you want to know.  Didn’t your boss tell you; that you must be subtle when approaching people like us, people with more experience, and less of a conscience.

Francesca looked at me.

“Don’t think I won’t stop you if you get in the way.  You can stay while it is useful to us, but don’t ask questions you know we’re not going to give you answers for.”

“Then I’ll assume you don’t know where she is, other than most likely in Sorrento, waiting for the meeting.”

“Good assessment.”

© Charles Heath 2023

The 2am Rant: We are taught not to be selfish, but…

Today I decided to take some time out and read a few blogs, to see what the rest of the world is doing leading up to CampNaNoWriMo, and sometimes read some news that’s usually a few days old, not that I’m complaining.

And still working on the James Bondish piece that set my mind on fire.  Last I heard, he has almost completed a successful, almost suicide, mission.  There’s just a small matter of a rebel helicopter with air-to-air missiles trying to shoot down the escape plane.

I try to keep away from the news if it’s possible, but it comes at you from everywhere.  My browser somehow decided to allow notifications and every few minutes a little popout slides out from the bottom right corner and tells me what’s gone wrong.

Never any good news by the way.

And yes, I have Windows 10, but I can’t be bothered reading the manual to find out how to stop them.  Maybe, subconsciously, I don’t.

I never thought one man could generate so many headlines.  We had one, given the nickname, the human headline, but Trump, he is in a class of his own.

I used to like watching him on The Apprentice, believe it or not.

But again I digress…

I saw the word selfish popup in a number of posts, and it reminded me that, at times writers have to be.  There are only so many hours in a day, and after emails, blogs, reading, news, life, there’s very little time left to write.

So, we need to be selfish at those times.  I am because when I sit down to write, there shouldn’t be any distractions.  As a writer, I’m not seeking popularity, maybe one day that will come, but I’m in this writing thing because I have stories to tell and I want to get them down.  Nobody may ever read them, I may never rise above mediocrity, but I am doing something I love, and very few of us out there can say that unequivocally.

Most of us have a day job or something else that consumes a great deal of our time.

Oh to be a successful author like James Patterson?  But how does he do it?  I guess it comes down to hard work, and a little bit of luck.

And maybe, one day, if I work hard enough, some of it might come my way.

What I learned about writing – Mortal danger and the story that saves you

The Scheherazade Challenge: If My Life (and Your Attention) Depended On It…

Let’s play a dangerous game, shall we?

Imagine, for a fleeting moment, that the weight of an ancient dynasty rests on your shoulders. The Sultan, broken by betrayal and consumed by cynicism, has vowed to take a new bride each night and execute her by dawn. And then, there’s you. A single, fragile life against the tide of his despair, with only one weapon: a story.

Not just any story. A story so compelling, so intricate, so profoundly human, that it can outwit the executioner, melt a frozen heart, and stretch the boundaries of time itself. Your very survival, the fate of all women in the kingdom, hinges on your ability to spin a tale that leaves the Sultan hanging on your every word, desperate for the next sunrise to reveal its continuation.

Now, take a deep breath. We’re not in a dusty, lamp-lit palace, and (thankfully) my head isn’t on a literal chopping block. But as a writer in this wild, wonderful, and wonderfully noisy digital age, there are still stakes. My “Sultan” is you, dear reader, scrolling through an endless bazaar of content. My “dawn” is the moment you might click away, drawn by the siren song of another tab. And my “life” (or at least, my creative soul and my ability to connect with you) depends on telling an amazing story.

So, if I were Scheherazade, faced with that impossible mandate, what tale would I weave?

It wouldn’t be a simple adventure, nor a flat romance. It would need layers, heart, and a message so subtle yet profound that it could soften the hardest of souls.

My Life-Saving Story: “The Loom of Whispers and the Cartographer of Hidden Threads”

My story would begin in a city unlike any other, not built of stone and mortar, but of stories themselves. Let’s call it Aethelgard, the City of Echoes. Its streets are paved with forgotten proverbs, its buildings rise from ancient legends, and the very air hums with the whispers of every life ever lived within its bounds.

Our protagonist would be Elara, not a warrior or a princess, but a reclusive Cartographer of Hidden Threads. Her unique gift (and burden) is that she can see the invisible, iridescent threads that connect every living being in Aethelgard. Each thread represents a shared experience, a glance exchanged, a kindness given, a betrayal suffered, a dream whispered in unison. Most people only see their own thread, a solitary line stretching from their heart. But Elara sees the entirety: a magnificent, terrifying, ever-shifting tapestry of countless lives interwoven.

The story would begin with a creeping malaise. Aethelgard, once vibrant, is losing its colour. Its echoes are fading. People are growing isolated, suspicious, convinced their own struggles are unique and paramount. The threads, once brilliantly intertwined, are fraying, even breaking. Elara knows the city is dying because its people are forgetting how deeply they are connected.

Her quest is not to slay a monster, but to mend the tapestry. She must journey not across lands, but through the stories themselves.

Each night, I would begin one of Elara’s “thread-following” expeditions:

  • Night One: She follows a flickering, almost invisible thread from a lonely old baker who believes no one cares for him. The thread leads her back through generations, revealing how his great-grandmother, a woman he never knew, once saved a merchant’s fortune with a single, anonymous act of kindness, and how that merchant’s lineage later funded the very orphanage where the baker himself found refuge as a child. The baker’s life, he would discover, was built on an ancient, forgotten thread of generosity.
  • Night Two: Elara traces a taut, angry thread between two feuding families, their hatred centuries old. As she follows it, she uncovers the true origin: not a grand slight, but a misinterpreted joke, a stolen flower, and a series of escalating misunderstandings, each fueled by pride and a refusal to truly listen. But she also finds faint counter-threads – moments of shared joy, unspoken longing for peace, nearly-forgiven transgressions – that still hum beneath the surface.
  • Night Three: She investigates a vibrant thread of innovation and creativity, discovering it’s not the solitary genius of a famous artist, but the culmination of countless, unacknowledged inspirations: a child’s forgotten drawing, a beggar’s hummed tune, a weaver’s discarded pattern, each contributing a vital, invisible strand to the masterpiece.

Through Elara’s journey, the Sultan (and you, dear reader) would witness the profound irony of human existence: we are all singular, yet inextricably bound. Our greatest joys and deepest pains are rarely our own alone. Every act, every word, every silence sends ripples through the great tapestry.

The “cliffhanger” each night wouldn’t be a sword fight, but a dawning realisation. Elara would be on the verge of revealing a crucial, heart-wrenching, or profoundly beautiful connection that implicates seemingly disparate characters, perhaps even hinting at the Sultan’s own lineage, his own perceived isolation, as being a part of this vast, interconnected web.

The story would be a mirror, reflecting the Sultan’s own life back at him – not judging, but revealing. It would show him that just as a breaking thread in the farthest corner of Aethelgard could unravel the entire city, so too did his own actions send tremors through the lives of everyone around him. It would demonstrate that true power comes not from severing connections, but from understanding and honouring them.

By the final night, the Sultan wouldn’t just be entertained; he would be transformed. He would see himself not as an isolated ruler, but as a vital, powerful weaver in the Loom of Whispers. And with that understanding, perhaps, the desire to cut threads would vanish, replaced by a profound respect for the intricate, beautiful, and utterly inescapable tapestry of life.

What about you? If your life depended on it, what story would you tell? And what hidden threads would you uncover?

365 Days of writing, 2026 – My Second Story 19

More about my second novel

…

Rupert follows Worthington and Arabella to and from the concert, and then observes them over dinner, wondering what it is that’s missing in his life until they go back to the room for the night.

To him, it seems like it’s just a sex weekend with cultural embellishments.

Until he spies Worthington on the move at two am, leaving the hotel on foot.  It turns into a meeting between him and two other men in the park before Worthington returns to the hotel, business concluded.

It has to be something to do with John and Zoe; otherwise, the meeting would have been in the hotel, not the deep recesses of the park.  Rupert has photographs and gives them to Sebastian for identification.

At least they now know the reason for Worthington being in Vienna.  Arabella just makes it look more casual.

John breaks his plan to Zoe over breakfast, and she is surprised.  It’s a good plan, and once she had dealt with the problems, it would be a go.

And, she added quite sombrely, if they all survive.

The bad news was that she would be leaving the next morning to visit an old friend, Dominica, who probably isn’t so friendly now, to get information.  And, no, she was not sure what would happen after that, but if she could, she would call him.

With the two men identified and the danger they presented, Sebastian had to move to plan B and set it up.  He deliberately doesn’t tell either of them because he knows they would strenuously object.

The plan:  sniper to shoot them from a building across the road, not to kill, but to slow them down.  It would be difficult to be out plotting when in the emergency ward of a hospital.

But, as usual, things don’t quite go to plan.  Worthington is hit and wounded, though not severely as Sebastian had hoped, but Arabella moved slightly just before he pulled the trigger, and he couldn’t see what happened, but what he could see, it looked very, very bad.

…

…

Searching for locations:  Vancouver, Canada – 1

It’s raining.  There should be no surprise there.  And cold.  It’s late December and well into winter.

Perhaps not as cold as it could be, somewhere between three and four degrees.

We are staying at the Hilton Metrotown in Burnaby.  Metrotown is also the largest shopping mall in British Columbia.  I agree that it is large and found it to be a great way to get some exercise after being in and out of planes for the previous 24 hours.

The first discovery for the day was a trolley bus, something that I thought didn’t exist anymore. 

The second was to discover so many global brands, but how different the products are from what we can get back in Australia.  This is particularly true for cars, where we find that GM-based vehicles and Mazdas are far better than what is available to us.

The third was to discover that it seems we are almost in the heart of Chinatown, where going out an exit on the second floor takes you to a Chinese food court, with all manner of food types, and, it seems, tea bars.  It also explained why, in one supermarket we went to, signs were in both Chinese and English.

Being still tired from the travel, we don’t venture further than the mall, where we have lunch, for me, the Canadian version of KFC, which seems to defeat the purpose of trying local food.  It seems most of the food that I can see in the food shops does not seem that appetising.

Later, we go out and find a Boston Pizza with a sports bar where we indulge in a 21-ounce Molten on tap, and a lime mojito, while watching the ice hockey on the big screen and the surrounding small screens.  Ice hockey is in some world junior championships (but mostly northern hemisphere hockey-playing nations) and seems as ferocious as the NHL.

But it does raise a question: why isn’t there a female NHL?  I guess this wasn’t the time to canvass opinions in the bar.

Something else we discovered is that alcohol is relatively cheap, and get a case of Molten Canadian ale, Bacardi Black label, and maple-flavoured whiskey for about a third of what it would cost at home.  Of course, it must be cheaper than firewood in keeping Canadians warm in the dead of winter.

We didn’t try the pizza, which kind of defeated the purpose of going there.

Meanwhile, back in the room, we find the local ice hockey channel, and then, to make sure we get to see the Maple Leafs, plug in the computer so that we can test it.  Good to go.  

That’s tomorrow, tonight we’re watching the Vancouver Canucks.

In a word: Mark

A teacher will mark a test in order to give the student a mark out of 100.  Yes, to mark a test means to ascertain right and wrong answers and score it accordingly, and getting a mark out of 100 could determine a great many different outcomes at school.

Whereas a mark on your clothes could mean you’ve been playing with fire, rolled in the mud or if much older having a salacious affair with an unexplainable lipstick mark on your collar.

A mark is someone that a con man believes will be easily deceived.

A mark is a catch in certain types of football.

You can have an identifying mark on some item of property.

it’s literally the x marks the spot for someone who cannot write, i.e. make your mark

There can be a mark on a rope that indicates the depth of water.

And many, many more…

But not to be confused with marque, which could be the make or model of a particular type of car

Or marc which is the refuse of grapes after being pressed

 

PI Walthenson’s second case – A case of finding the ‘Flying Dutchman’.

Known only to a few, there is a legend that a ship named the ‘Flying Dutchman’ left Nazi Germany in the last weeks of the war and set sail for America, escorted by U-boats, under a different name. Aboard was a trove of treasure and gold worth a ‘king’s ransom’.

It was said that it had been sent to a group of American Nazis to create the Fourth Reich at an appropriate time. Over the years, many expeditions off the coast had searched, but found no trace of the vessel or the treasure.

In other words, it was just a legend created to boost tourism.

…

Fast forward to 2024. Our intrepid private detective, Harry Walthenson, overhears a conversation at Grand Central Station. It was the oddness of the message that caught his attention. An investigation turned up nothing out of the ordinary, and he thinks no more about it.

Then Harry is kidnapped, interrogated, and asked questions over and over about a date and a place, why he went there, and when he could not give satisfactory answers, he was beaten half to death and left for dead on a rubbish heap. He was lucky that it was a living space for homeless men; otherwise, he would have died.

In the aftermath, he once again gives it no more thought.

…

After resolving his first case successfully, there’s no rest. Harry’s angry mother comes to his office and demands that he find out where his father has gone. She believes he has run off with a mistress, not for the first time.

Perhaps it was not the wisest decision she has made, because Harry promises to investigate, and adds that she might not like what he finds.

He soon discovered he does not like what he finds, that his father’s friends, a cabal formed at University, have two who are his mother’s current lovers, and another, a criminal blackmailing his father.

Felicity, now his partner, working on a different case, and trying to get answers, uncovers a crime family involved in guarding a disused warehouse on the docks, where she believes Harry had been taken for interrogation, and subsequently dumped nearby to die.

Why are they up to? What is so important that the empty warehouse needs guarding? Who is employing them?

Harry, following up on the death of the blackmailer, traces his death back to an enforcer employed by his grandfather. His mother’s grandfather was a pre-war industrialist who made his fortune in war munitions and shipbuilding.

He was also a member of the American Nazi party.

When Harry also discovers a logbook belonging to a so-called wartime Liberty ship the “Paul Revere” in brackets ‘Freiheitskämpfer’, hidden by his father, and written in a code that is not readily identifiable.

It is no longer a matter of a father who has run off with his mistress; it is a very frightened man in fear of his life, running from a group who will stop at nothing to get the logbook back. And when Harry discovers a family connection to the group, it becomes a race against time to decode the log and find his father before his grandfather does.

…

Coming soon: Harry Walthenson’s new adventure – A case of finding the ‘Flying Dutchman’