JACK THE LAD
An overturned sleigh.
Thundering, galloping, panicking horses.
A thousand yards of hard, rutted ice.
Deliverance or death !
Jack rescues a very public figure and he’s drawn into a gilded world with few rules and heady stakes.
It’s 1880: the world is small; the players have perilous ambitions. Espionage has always been a polite game, but now the stakes are changing.
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The Intelligence Service is not equipped for the modern world.
And it’s certainly not ready for Jack!
Book One of The Scandalous Memoirs of General John Torrance
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How Our Modern World Came into Being.
The memoirs of General Torrance begin in 1880, when he was just 20 years old and about to be swept up and into a world of danger, money, and intrigue. Jack is an unlikely addtion to the British Intelligence service, but he's game for just about anything. And that's just what happens over a lifetime of adventuring.
Ottawa, London, Cairo, Khartoum, Berlin, New York, Moscow, Delhi, Peking - he is sent to them all and more. From the last cavalry charge to the Cold War, an intelligence agent is always there. And it's often Jack.
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We know how small today's world can be; it was much smaller then. As Jack attests, it was powerful people – with their egos, impetuosity, lasciviousness, lunacy, and bravery – who stumbled the modern world into being.
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Book 2: Modesty Jack
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Trust modesty. Trust results even more.
Jack is seconded to the tiny British Intelligence Department, little more than a map room in 1880.
Jack is assigned to the Austria, Turkey, and Africa Desk. A hodgepodge of little importance. Jack’s got bugger all to do, but he wants to learn, and he seeks out experts on Islam and its politics.
When trouble erupts in Egypt, his Arabist friends offer to pay his way to Cairo. Perhaps Jack can help free the Egyptians. Delighted somebody else is footing the bill, Intelligence Branch sends Jack.
Into a revolution.
COMING SPRING 2024
Book 3: One-eyed Jack
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The future has been foretold – a guide, the Mahdi – will free Soudan, free Egypt, topple the corrupt Ottoman Empire, and establish a new caliphate.
Sure enough, the Egyptian province of Soudan falls to the Mahdi. The Khedive in Cairo hires Englishman General Charles Gordon to go to Khartoum and evacuate the Egyptians and Europeans trapped within the walled city.
Gordon gets there but can’t get out. Fuelled by jingoism in the press, the English mount an expedition to save Gordon.
In advance goes Jack – a wild card, a one-eyed jack – to reason with two madmen, Gordon and the Mahdi, and get everyone out alive.
COMING AUTUMN 2024
Character should always drive plot.