GROUNDSPEED
A kidnapping with
horrific repercussions

DIRTY BUSINESS
Industrial pollution
 and multiple murder

THE CHINA MOON
A high-flying
espionage tale

GIDEON'S BIBLE
An unconventional
detective hunts
for a UFO

S'END FOR BRADEN
Southend's nicest
private eye

THE GRACE OF GOD
A hit & run, a
blackmailer and a
hungry newsman

EXIT POINT
An autogiro aviator
and a terror plot

THE HOUSESITTER
A human target is lured
to a fatal rendezvous
(coming soon)

STOP LINE
A dangerous genetic
drug must be stopped
(work in progress)

EXCLUSION ZONE
A suitcase bomb on an
underground train
(coming soon)

NINE TENTHS
OF THE LAW
Life on the London
despatch circuit
(coming soon)

Top

GIDEON'S BIBLE
               It might all be true, but that doesn't mean it's the truth ...

Introduction

By the time I'd written this novel, I'd had a depressing number of rejections on my other books. Some of the rejections weren't even complete books. They were merely ideas for books; chapters that I'd scribbled down whilst testing the waters hoping to find out what literary agents and publishers really wanted. Because when you're starting out, it's not always clear what rings the right bells. One literary agent pulls this way, while another pulls the other way. One editor favours a particular style, while another suggests a different approach.

The result?

Confusion.

So I sat down with my "significant other" and listed a set of criteria. My hero was going to be involved in the paranormal; that's always a popular theme. But because I don't believe in ghosts and UFOs, etc, I wanted him to be a sceptic. To give the novel a bigger feel, I put the British Prime Minister in the story. I dreamed up an appropriate and worthy bad guy (who was at heart a patriot), and I gave my hero a suitable sidekick (female, of course, for a bit of sexual tension). I also had various things going bump in the night and I threw in a few extra sub-plots.

This,. I decided, was a winning formula. Three chapters of my latest opus will have those miserable, low-life literary agents and submissions editors crawling at my feet and begging for the rest of the manuscript (hah-hah. hah-hah, the fools, etc ...)

Except that it didn't.

Some liked bits of it. Some liked other bits. I was advised it was a great title. A lousy title. The beginning was weak. The middle was weak. The end was weak. It was good, bad, interesting, not right for their lists. It was sci-fi, and they didn't handle sci-fi (it's not sci-fi). It was a paranormal story, and they didn't handle paranormal novels (it's not a paranormal novel).

In short, Thanks, but no thanks.

The moral? You can have all the right ingredients and get nowhere. And, conversely, you can have all the wrong ingredients and make a fortune. The bottom line is that it's largely a literary lottery. You write your books, throw the dice, and win or lose.

Of course, a little talent goes a long way too. But mostly, I guess, you just have to be persistent and lucky.

Anyway, here's a chapter from Gideon's Bible; six months in the making, and X number of years on the rejection pile.

Tip: Grow your fingernails long and strong if you want to be a successful writer, because you could be hanging on them for a long time to come.

GIDEON'S BIBLE

140,000 words

Plot: The Prime Minister, an amateur astronomer, has spotted a UFO flying close to his Norfolk country home. It has to be a hoax. But it needs to be checked. Meanwhile, other strange things are happening in the district. A charred body has washed up on a local beach. Mysterious security men in black four by fours are patrolling the neighbourhood. Two young girls have gone missing. And a cow has been heard speaking French. John Gideon - Britain's number one sceptic and paranormal investigator - is soon on the case ...

Chapter One

John Gideon plunked his empty coffee cup back on the desk and pushed it out of reach. It both looked and tasted like tree bark. There were bits floating in it; odd bits that didn’t look as if they were related in any way, shape or form to the coffee bean. When were people going to learn that real, bona fide, fit-for-human-consumption coffee came in a jar? And freeze dried? He snatched a sheet of paper from the desk. Studied the big, bold, six digit figure at the bottom. Frowned.

‘So what does it all mean?’ he said to Arnold Becker, his accountant.

‘It means, my boy, that you are in serious trouble, fiscally speaking.’

‘You’re sure that decimal point is in the right place?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Damn.’

‘Exactly.’

Becker indicated six cardboard boxes of receipts and assorted paperwork in the corner of the office, ‘And now you tell me there’s more of this to come?’

John Gideon was about to say something to that. Something bitter. As bitter as the tree bark coffee. But decided to rise above it.

He threw the sheet of paper back on the desk.

‘So what exactly is my tax liability then?’

‘Depends on how many more boxes you have, and on whose figures you believe.’

‘Just one more box,’ he said, holding up a finger, ‘which I forgot to bring. And I’ll believe your figures, if you don’t mind.’

‘Better if you believe theirs,’ said Becker. ‘And Her Majesty’s Inland Ball Crusher says you owe him around half a million, give or take a hundred thousand.’

‘Well what do your figures say?’

Becker grimaced. Rocked back and forth in his chair a few times. Found a new recumbent angle. Stayed there.

‘My figures also show you owe them around half a million, but I say give or take fifty thousand.’

‘Some accountant you are.’

‘You can talk. Didn’t anyone ever mention the words ‘ledger’ and/or ‘accounts’ to you? You must have heard of them somewhere in your thirty-six years on planet earth.’

‘Thirty-five. And I thought my manager was taking care of that.’

‘Your manager, huh? The same individual who’s now — phutt! — conveniently vanished?’

‘I didn’t invent him, Arnold.’

‘You might as well have. Because he certainly doesn’t live at the address you gave me, and doesn’t have an office where you said he was supposed to have one, and nobody else seems to have heard of him either, and —’

‘What are you implying?’

‘I’m implying nothing. You don’t pay me enough to imply. I’m simply telling you that for all practical — meaning litigious — purposes there is no manager, and never was, and that you invented him and are now trying and weasel out of your fiscal obligations. Because that’s how the government will see it.’

‘But —’

‘But nothing! You haven’t even got a photograph of the man to prove he existed.’

‘I’ve got his signature on a dozen cheques. I’ve got a contract too.’

‘Signature, schmignature,’ said Becker, shaking his head. ‘And this contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’

‘Well if you think I’m lying, you can speak to the manager of —’

‘Gideon! You don’t seem to understand. It doesn’t matter who I speak to. Your alleged manager is a non-person. And even if he exists, he isn’t here, is he? Which means that you’re left holding the smoking bomb. God! If you came to me a year ago — even six months ago — all this could have been avoided. Well, could have been headed off for a bit at least. Until your TV show gets the go ahead.’

‘If it gets the go ahead.’

‘It will. Be positive. I have a feeling in my bones about that.’

‘It may not,’ cautioned Gideon, remembering his last meeting with the producer. ‘And that feeling you have is probably arthritis.’

‘Well it had better get the go ahead,’ said Becker, swivelling round to the left to smile at his three or four dozen cacti sunning themselves on the window sill. ‘Because if it doesn’t, you’d better buy yourself a few boxes of striped sun tan lotion. Know what I mean?’

‘That bad, huh?’

‘That bad. More coffee?’

‘No.’

‘Something stronger then?’

‘No.’

‘Well I’m not going to let that stop me.’ Becker reached for his intercom and barked instructions at his secretary.

John Gideon had, of course, secretly known it was this bad. He knew it long before the first visit from the Inland Revenue inspector, and — if he was honest — knew it long before his manager vanished without a trace.

Meaning Australia.

He’d known from the start that taking his show on the road was risky. But it seemed like the next logical thing to do seeing as he was fast becoming a household name. And what with his book about to go into print, it was the perfect time.

Except that it wasn’t.

The publishing firm had unexpectedly folded leaving his 100,000 words (with over two hundred full colour pictures) stranded somewhere between cyber world and the printing press. And then the so-called road show had ground to a halt in Carlisle one night four months back after a miserable season slumming around crummy meeting halls and second-rate seaside pavilions. Now he was surviving on lectures and Women’s Institute talks and the occasional TV and radio appearance until his new publishers got their act together — and until he got his finances sorted.

It should all have worked out so different. But it didn’t. Like a fool, he’d believed all the promises and had committed himself to huge promotional expenses. Had, in his own way, been just as naive and as gullible as everyone else. And that hurt. It hurt his pride, if not his reputation. Mercifully, his financial secrets were still secure. But as soon as it leaked out to the press, he knew that it would be damaging.

He gazed over at the window. Sighed. Wheeled himself over there and looked out over Hyde Park. Beautiful in the early September sunshine. Greens. Russets. And early October browns. Some people were riding horses. He could just see them beneath the tree canopy, trotting along in single file and showing off. He was a pretty good horseman himself, or thought he was until the accident six weeks ago. Now he was getting to be a pretty good wheelchair man and was on the mend. Was lucky not to have suffered permanent spinal damage.

Arnold Becker was saying something to him, he realised. He spun round expertly. Raised his chin.

‘How’s that again?’

‘I was saying,’ said Becker, ‘that if you sold that prehistoric heap of yours, you could probably raise a few thousand. That might help.’

‘About twenty-five thousand actually. But my Rolls Royce isn’t for sale. It’s a family heirloom and I plan to fix it up some day.’

‘Better hurry then. Because when you can’t pay your tax bill, they’ll seize it anyway. And they’ll take that mansion of yours too.’

Gideon wheeled himself back over to the desk. Parked. Rested his elbows on the armrests.

‘My “mansion” happens to be a two-and-a-half bedroom cottage in Kent and is heavily mortgaged. I can’t imagine that’s worth much.’

‘Actually, your entire life is mortgaged at the moment and isn’t worth much either. So you’d better think of something. And fast.’

‘I thought that was your job.’

‘I’m an accountant, you fool, not a bloody magician.’ Becker motioned towards the window. Stabbed a pudgy finger at it. ‘I live it the real world.’

‘So do I,’ said Gideon, thinking that that was only half true. Or not even that.

He actually spent the greater part of his life in a world of séances and hobgoblins and men from inner space and things that went bump in the dark. In fact, he was now perhaps the country’s most celebrated sceptic, famed for debunking just about everything from the ‘Gateshead Shroud’ to the ‘Farnborough Fairies’ to ‘Jesus of Nottingham’. For ten years he’d been finding hidden magnets beneath Ouija boards, recovering polystyrene monsters from country park lakes, exposing “sleepers” lurking among the local faith healer audience and generally helping the nation’s lost and sad and distraught and hopeful and merely gullible hold on to their silver, and here he was unable to hold onto his.

Not that he wasn’t at heart a believer; a believer of other world’s beyond this one. A believer of the untapped power of the human mind, of infinite psychic possibilities, and interplanetary visitors — and maybe even the odd monster flapping about in a foggy country park lake. The thing was, he’d never actually found any tangible evidence to suggest that the world wasn’t anything other than what it seemed to be to the common man.

Not once.

Every clairvoyant he’d ever met had turned out to be nothing but a highly plausible back-street psychologist. Every psychic surgeon was a sleight-of-hand expert with a pocketful of chicken guts. Every spoon bender was a fraud. Every stage mind reader had an assistant with a secret code.

Or a secret microphone.

It ought to have been enough to persuade him that there was only one world worth getting to grips with, and that was this world; a world of income tax and dodgy managers that went south in the night. But it wasn’t. And why was that, he wondered? The legendary John Gideon stubbornness? Or perhaps the not-so-legendary-but-equal-potent John Gideon stupidity?

He wasn’t sure. But he believed in truth, and felt that truth wasn’t something that was static and fixed but was constantly expanding. That today’s mysticism was merely the science of tomorrow. That there really were worlds beyond this. But first there were ten million frauds to weed out.

And, of course, the Inland Revenue to exorcise.

The door opened suddenly. More pungent tree bark appeared.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like one, Mr Gideon?’ Arnold Becker’s secretary; a thin, willowy woman in her forties.

She’d been telling him earlier that morning about the strange noises coming from the cellar of the house her sister had just moved into. In return, he’d told her to hang fire on calling the vicar round and get in a subsidence expert instead.

She’d laughed loudly at that, thinking he was joking. He decided to let her think what she wanted to think. In his experience, most people did anyway.

‘No thanks,’ he said to the coffee.

‘Something else perhaps?’

‘Got any money?’

She hesitated, then laughed loudly at that too. Louder than was strictly necessary.

When she left, he wheeled himself around the office for a bit. It was large and spacious and white and comfortable. Outside he could hear the Monday morning traffic burbling along.

Gideon looked at his accountant. ‘I suppose I could always get a job as a plumber to tide me over.’

Becker slurped his tree bark. ‘Is that a wheelchair joke or something?’

‘No. I was just thinking of how many times poltergeists have turned out to be nothing but blocked pipes. I know a lot about that kind of stuff now.’ He smiled. ‘How are your pipes, Arnold?’

‘My pipes are fine, thank you. And you’d better start taking me seriously.’

Gideon did a quick two-wheeled pirouette and felt like getting up and stretching his legs. But he resisted the urge. His new publishers liked the wheelchair. Liked it a lot. They said it was good for his image. Made him look trustworthy. Authoritative. They told him to try and get used to it, and had even given him a blanket to put over his legs.

‘All you need now is an assistant,’ they said.

‘Don’t you mean a cat?’

‘Cat?’

‘To sit on the blanket and purr?’

‘No. An assistant,’ they insisted. ‘Someone to fetch and carry and ... well, you get the idea.’

So now he had an assistant. Or would have later this afternoon when the girl they’d hired arrived to take up her duties.

‘You’ll like her,’ he was told. ‘She’s very nice. Bubbly. Colourful.’

He was too tired to argue anymore. If his new publishers — and for that matter his literary agent — thought he needed a wheelchair and an assistant to promote his new book, then who was he to argue? He couldn’t even sort out his income tax.

He wheeled himself back over to the desk. Put the brake on.

‘So? Are we done for now, Arnold?’

‘You’re the one who’s done,’ said Becker. ‘You’ve done yourself. Now I’m going to try and undo you, so to speak.’

‘How much time to I have?’

‘Until you need to start putting on the striped sun tan lotion?’

‘Put that way, yes.’

‘I don’t know. Just let me see what I can do.’

‘You don’t believe me, do you? About the money. Or lack of?’

‘Maybe what you say is true,’ said Becker, his arms opening to encompass the room. ‘Maybe you really don’t have all this money squirreled away —’

‘It is true.’

‘ — but it’s not me you have to convince. And in the meantime, you’d better start thinking up ways of earning money. And quick. If we can make Her Majesty a suitable — meaning sizeable — cash offer in the very near future, we just may be able to keep you out of clink.’ He leaned forward suddenly, smiled mischievously and said, ‘Hey. How about that guy in Preston you told me about? The one who claims he grows banknotes in his greenhouse?’

Gideon began wheeling himself towards the door.

‘I think you’ve been drinking a little too much tree bark, Arnold. Maybe you’d better ease up a little.’

 ‘You just look after yourself,’ said Becker, turning away to the window to have a quiet word with his cacti.