I have mentioned in previous Pause for Thought about some of the books I have managed to read during this lockdown. These have included; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (John LeCarre), Moby Dick (Herman Melvyn), and a couple of others, but I’ve just finished one book that has had me spellbound from start to finish, in fact I couldn’t put it down in case I missed something.

It’s all about a man who works for the government as a lawyer. He is really clever and knows his stuff, so he soon starts to work his way up through government circles and, even though he is relatively young, he is destined for a Cabinet Office position. However just before his ultimate promotion, he discovers that the government that he has worked for all this time is actually controlled by a Mafia type organisation and everything is not as legal as it seems.

He decides that, regardless of the promise of greatness within the organisation he could not continue in a career that would be steeped in untruths and corruption, you could say that he saw the light and wanted out.

Unfortunately, the Mafia organisation think he knows too much and must be silenced.

Despite our hero changing his identity, the Mafia catch up with him and have him arrested on a false charge but, remember he is a lawyer and a very clever one, so he gets acquitted.  Not to be put off, the Mafia organisation move up a gear and employ a team of ‘hit men’ to attack and kill our hero, but he still has friends within the government, and they manage to get a message to him warning him of the attack. He quickly packs his bag and gets out of town so when the hit men arrive he is long gone.

Our hero decides that the best form of defence is attack, so he gathers a few of his trusted friends and starts to spill the beans about the government corruption and launches an opposition party. As you can imagine this does not go down well in government circles, and the hit men are called in once again to have another attempt to kill our hero.

This time they corner him outside an army barracks but the soldiers see what is happening and come out to drag our hero inside the barracks to safety.

The commanding officer of the barracks sympathises with our hero, but knows that government spies will soon inform their employers of our hero’s whereabouts, so he packs him off onto a boat bound for another country.

Unfortunately, you’ve guessed it, the ship is hit by a perfect storm, and a tsunami and everything else that a ship can be hit with and it sank, forcing everyone on board to swim to a nearby desert island where they were washed up safely, but the island was full of wild animals and reptiles and the survivors were in constant threat of deadly snake bites.

The natives on the island were very friendly and cared for the shipwrecked party very well. Eventually after several months they were rescued by another passing ship and continued their journey.

I won’t tell you the ending because you may want to read the book yourselves and that would spoil it, but I can say that our hero made several more journeys and he died at an old age.

This book has everything, an insight into government corruption, spies and counter spies, political skulduggery, military intervention, court room drama, sea journeys and sea disasters, shipwrecks and survival on desert islands, and an ending that leaves you wanting more.

This is a great read and I can recommend it to you all.

It’s called Acts 8 – 28 in the Bible.

Derek T.