Rupert’s Journeys begin in the 1920s, when the world was still trying to forget the horrors of the First World War and abandon itself to more civilized pursuits, such as international travel. FATAL TEARS introduces you to the exotic mystique of Egypt and the River Nile. Diamond smuggling features largely, as do the relationships between a group of travellers confined to a Nile cruiser. Then there is the handsome doctor and the mysterious figure of someone called The Phoenix.
The second part of the quartet, THE GERSHOM SCROLL, is centered on the rose pink city of Petra and is set against the ongoing campaign for the establishment of a Jewish state in the region of British controlled Palestine. Archaeology features largely – as always – but what is the significance of the mysterious Gershom Scroll and why is MOSAD so interested in it? Does it even exist?
The third part of the saga, THE CLOTH OF DESTINY, takes you from Istanbul to Abyssinia on the eve of the Italian Invasion. Rupert and his doctor friend are in the wrong place at the wrong time and find themselves charged with getting a small wooden box and its mysterious contents out of the county before it’s too late. What is so important about the contents of the box and where has Winfield seen the ornate patterning on it before? With British power in decline on the global stage, the American Legation in Addis Ababa seems to be the only help available. More intriguing, could the contents of the box have anything to do with the Mandylion?
The final installment in the quartet, SEA OF SAND, takes us to Libya and the unforgiving heat of the dessert – almost as vengeful as the local population, fiercely determined to throw off the yoke of Italian colonization. Are some of the characters really who they seem to be, or are there secret agendas? What is the Prussian aristocrat Gerhard von Neudorff, who Rupert met in The Gershom Scroll, doing in Tripoli on the flimsy excuse of searching for evidence of Aryan superiority amidst the ruins of Leptis Magna? Why is London so interested in Nazi developments in rocket propulsion? Or is what lies under the sand the real motivation?
Tigh Hattie Press have secured the rights to all of my work and are setting about producing second editions as ebooks and print on demand paperbacks via Amazon. This work will continue throughout 2022.
The fourth in the quartet, SEA OF SAND is in the final stages of production and should be available before the end of March, 2022.
Please contact me via the contacts page, should you have and question in the meantime.
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