What Is the Lie‪?‬

It began as a typical day for Tom. He was caught up with his petty arguments with traffic, more substantial disagreements with his stepfather and an all consuming passion for expanding his environmental waste treatment. Nevertheless, Tom was optimistic about life. All that changed when he arrived home to discover the bodies of his mother, step father and a girl employed to cook. His desperate plight became apparent to him when after answering several pointed questions about his relationship with the victims, police found his gun at the scene. In a moment of madness Tom flees the scene adding weight to police suspicions.

Confused by the absence of any clear clues and his mind swirling with a flood of possible suspects, Tom gradually starts to piece together scraps of evidence in an effort to discover the real murderer. His every move was harassed by the threat of being located by his pursuers. Detective Adrian Burton had his own problems. He was besieged by doubts about his prime suspect; his investigation was continually undermined by an ambitious colleague and his search for Tom was frustrated by the fugitive’s uncooperative friends.

Tom’s search was interrupted by disturbing challenges to his whole perspective of life. On his quest for truth he was confronted by the claims of the truth causing him to question his values and his purpose. Gordon Grose, an elderly lay preacher, posed some difficult problems. If he was right then the path to truth was singular and exclusive to followers of the historical Jesus. Tom’s proud independence was a barrier to accepting his answers… the answer. The question that held him was ‘what was the lie’? Was he a part of that crowd that chose to believe a lie?

Avoiding capture while attempting to gather information, was a tricky balancing act for Tom. He contacted Detective Adrian Burton spasmodically feeding him possible suspects with the hope that his innocence would become apparent. At the same time he misled his friends so that they wouldn’t be able to reveal his true whereabouts.