The new novel

A novel of adventure and deceit where political intrigue and double dealing in a Caribbean paradise are made more gripping by the desperate moments when characters must sail cunningly out of harm’s way if they are to survive... read more

Praise for Summer Storms

"Gripping, Caribbean-based thriller"
Amazon - January 2018

"A long, detailed, well written book that holds the interest and engages the brain, so worth its pennies" 
Amazon Review - January 2018

"Cracking sailing adventure" 
Amazon - December 2017

"Moves nicely along, and has all the content to keep you interested. The sailing scenes are factually correct which makes it a great read if you have an interest in boats. Can't wait for your next one."
​Amazon Review - December 2017

Summer Storms: as reviewed by the main characters.
 
How commonplace for a book-reviewer to interview an author. How rare yet more rewarding to interview the characters. Writers take an hour to order some tedious thought only to conclude by obsequiously plugging the title and availability of their wonderful work. Imagine literary criticism free of this author fetishism. Hear Mr Kurtz instead of the polyglot mariner Joseph Conrad. Receive Lolita’s insights free of Nabakovian intervention. Such long awaited democratisation. Luckily, when I stumbled across two characters from the exciting, astonishing first novel ‘Summer Storms’ I had pencil and paper to hand.
 
Elliot Gibson and Annette Leclerc were escaping the post-denouement vengeance of the CIA, now waxing too hot in Caribbean Martinique. I knew them the moment they entered the Soho bistro. She: dark skinned, cropped hair, tall, slim, wrapped in French chic; he: sun-blond, unkempt, too weather-beaten for London, rolling behind her. I saw immediately how they epitomised two vital aspects of ‘Summer Storms’. They would soon get me to the heart of this new novel.
 
“Elliot,” I began, “‘Summer Storms’ is a political thriller with a strong moral bent, complex but disguised as a simple heart-pounding sailing yarn. Leaving aside all the contextual rope pulling, banging guns and rampaging hurricanes, the story tells of US imperialism in the Caribbean, the amoral use of discredited ex-CIA agents to pressure island governments to support the War on Terror and much other corruption. You use your co-hero’s illicit US Marine missions in South America to debate morality and how to speak truth unto power. The amoral real politique of his current covert operation in the Caribbean is cynically heightened by masking it as a religious crusade. The entrenched petty intrigues of pseudo-dictators in little Caribbean countries are ridiculed almost casually. What did you, the lead character, make of the story?”
 
Elliot:  “Wow, some speech, Skip. It’s just a sailing adventure. Me against the odds.”
 
Annette:  “Oh pfutt!  Elliot would say that because he and his creator have spent so long sailing the Caribbean.  Readers must not take any story-book narrator’s view too literally or ex cathedra. I inhabit the more reliable third-person narrative, so let me explain. Summer Storms’ two strands are quite different but increasingly intertwined. It is more than a sailing yarn, but how would Elliot know? Heroes are driven by action. For the most part forced to move forward rather than inhabit the past. Elliot says what he sees but he sees only what the author shows him. We third person characters can be more introspective; more widely informed. That is the wonderful difference between first and third party narration, n’est pas. I can see the bigger picture of the novel though he is its beating heart. At one level ‘Summer Storms’ has all those things you so elegantly listed but at bottom I see a love story. Elliot, like most English heroes, would not wish themselves in a love story, hein! And nor, if I observe correctly, would they know if they were deep in a moral debate.”
 
Elliot:  “Ouch, Cherie. We hero-narrators know there is a moral debate when the air is filled with excited French palaver. But fair play: I get to sail around the Caribbean in a wonderful old yacht; outsmart the Martinique police force and the murderous CIA; survive hurricanes; sup with the wild Carib god of wind; save my buddy Klaus’s life in a shoot out with an ex-CIA sociopath; help co-hero Andrew evolve from Marine Grunt to Honest Everyman while giving him and the reader several pointers on moral philosophy. Oh, merde, but if I get the girl, is it a love story?” 
 
Annette:  “Oh, men are such outrageous concealers and liars. They never know when or if to concede or admit their vulnerability. Now écouté, cherie. The author has given me the deepest insights. Me: a police interrogator; a woman; descendent of black slaves; heir to revolutionary France. That is a good start for a complex character, vraiment. I epitomise the theme of national self-determination in a region born in slavery, the chattel of the Great European Powers for 200 years before rising to become the cringing client of bullying Uncle Sam. Power corrupts but Anglo-Saxon power corrupts most, hein, cherie? If it had not been for French moral courage, not to mention our application of overwhelming force whenever the opportunity presents, those smaller Caribbean nations would have succumbed to the Yankee dollar. So, monsieur, you ask about my role in bringing more self determination to the Caribbean people.  ...”
 
Elliot:  “Annette, cherie, he did not. Let him speak. Sir, you can probably see the underlying contemporary truth of the novel. Action packed yet a powerful attack on corruption and institutionalised power. A mix of characters that meshes tightly and yet must resolve many tensions of temperament. Forgive me for phrasing it like that but Annette translated it from the French for me.”
 
Annette:  “There he goes, being ironically literally literal again. What can you learn from a story-book hero? Elliot is more than he knows and yet less than the writer makes him. The writer gave Elliot many dimensions but many more were not given. The writer has prepared Elliot’s back-story but to give it would tangle the narrative. Consequently Elliot only knows one dimension about himself and must resolve everything that happens to him into this single dimension. The writer is not limited like that and yet the writer is less than the hero he creates. It is Elliot’s actions that drive the plot. But which, of so many possible plots? Elliot must escape from crazy situations he has never even imagined using talents neither he nor the world ever knew he had. He must find courage deep within his natural state of cowardice. Compare this to the prissy writer. What does the writer know? Only what he imagines. True, his imagination need not be fettered by his stilted existence, but how does he live? In the prison of his head, rarely getting off his derrière. Yet he conceives multidimensional characters in multifarious worlds. What does he want? To pontificate. To make real people, beyond his control, take his views on life seriously.”
 
Elliot: “Only one dimension? What about that 200 page back-story?”
 
I raise my eyebrows, like Annette.
 
Annette: “Backstory?  That is so fashionable, cherie. Chic, like fractured narrative or phonetic symbolism. Too much School of Eng Lit for you and me. Our backstories were short scrappy notes long since lost. This book barely fits a genre. It is too tropical, too flamboyant; too Herman Melville to be categorised. Which bookshelf does it fit? It has intrigue and violence like a thriller but what about all that faux moralising? Not just Aristotle and Hegel. Mon dieu, the author nearly quoted Clausewitz ‘On War’, which he surely had never read. Elliot calls this a sailing yarn, but are “Moby Dick” and “Lord Jim” sailing yarns?  Non! Put it on the “39 Steps” shelf for simple heroes living in complex times, but recognise how it uses character and location to surmount the limitations of popular thrillers. Enough menace lies beneath our tropical brightness to trump the cold, sour introspection of Scandinavian insights; or the thinly-drawn mindless rut of serial killing in small-town America. In ‘Summer Storms’ we live by the beat of an exotic culture and language: the annual renewal of Carnival, the herculean power of hurricanes, the inequity when a super-power has minnows in its backyard, where “Might is Right” but only for the real-politique winners. Moral balance in ‘Summer Storms’ depends on extraordinary action by ordinary people, just as political balance depends on little states standing up to the super-power.”
 
Me: “I love how the Caribbean ambience produces that sinister texture when corruption underlies paradise, delivering broader relevance, like the best thrillers.”
 
Annette gives that delightful Gallic shrug, beyond words. Elliot taps his nose, which I find irritatingly Anglo-Saxon.
 
There is a subtle change in the atmosphere. I suspect Annette has sensed danger. She speaks without saying pfutt.
 
Annette:  “It has been revealing, n’est pas, your brief conversation with us. Imagine how better informed the world would be if critics had spoken with Emma Bovary instead of that covert romantic Gustave Flaubert or with Stephen Daedalus instead of that crapulous Irish nursery rhymer. But there is a limit to what any character knows of their story book. There are things you should discuss with the author.”
 
Me: “I would but I don't know who or where the author is.”
 
Elliot: “Can’t help you there, Skip. We thought it might be you.”
 
A tall, scar-faced man in curiously unattractive trousers enters the bistro. I turn my back, removing Elliot and Annette from my consciousness and thence from the room. I would ask which recent novel he was in but I don't like his eyes and, anyway, I already know. Elliot and Annette have come far but still have far to go if ‘Summer Storms’ is to get the sales it deserves from its own shelf in a book store near you.