Pilgrim Process

"Pilgrim Process" is a near future dystopia of some 117,000 words.

Is it possible that the entire world could be enslaved and transported into madness, simply because an apparently ordinary man in an unimportant small town in Hertfordshire, starts manipulating a secret society he has joined, and decides to see just how far he can make them go?

The extinction of freedom seems to be a process, rather than a revolution or coup. Many countries have essentially the same ruling party, but key policies that they adopt still originate from outside The Party's policy-making machine, to the bafflement of Malcolm Mallinson, a skilled and loyal spin doctor who cannot understand why he is outside the loop, despite his closeness to the Leader and the Leader's wife. Mallinson is eventually invited to join a shadowy Brotherhood which is "really running things", and he is very surprised to discover who he is now "brothers" with!

The manipulators are manipulated, and, unable to concede to themselves that they have been ingeniously lied to and made utter fools of, they continually rationalise their collaboration with increasingly gross violations of their own personal values, interests and even the ideological objectives of the Brotherhood, let alone The Party. They are trapped by the logic of their own betrayal into ever greater betrayal, by someone whom most of them cannot even identify, let alone resist.

Only Jane Cecil, a redundant presenter of a once popular "Godslot" TV programme, can offer any alternative to this stark spiral, and then only once she's become a penniless fugitive travelling on an old bicycle and living in a bivouac.

Just as the sinister but so ordinary man behind the global conspiracy reduces that conspiracy to its ultimate logical conclusion, which is to commit atrocity just because he wills it, Jane Cecil is obliged to reduce everything she has ever believed in to its simplest possible form.

Through Jane's eyes, even a world conquered by pure evil has little pockets of calm and beauty, to which her adversaries are oblivious. The book contains some scenes of shocking brutality, as well as those of peace and beauty.

Finally, all Jane can do is offer her deepest beliefs in their simplest possible form, to those who can only realistically expect to die if they accept.

This is not the author's only book, merely his only book of this kind.