Once Upon A Bridge

In a career that bridged some sixty years, Marcel Beaumont’s life was always connected with gold, bridges and the ever-present greed of people. On a barge, passing close by a bridge as a young man, he had known and lost love. Marcel, after having lost his family, his first love and his innocence to Nazis, took to blowing up bridges as part of his effort to wipe out evil. Marcel became so proficient, spending his late teen years as a skilled assassin and attracted the attention of authorities in a secret government department. In part one having been sexually assaulted beaten and arrested by the German occupying forces in Jersey in 1943, Marcel escapes and joins the resistance movement in France. Book two, a scheme is in operation to fool death camp war criminals into believing that they can escape to Brazil. Instead they are eliminated and the gold recovered. Karl Schmidt, a protégé of Hitler’s, returns to find out what has happened to his colleagues and the gold. So begins a cat and mouse game for the gold on land and sea. In part three Marcel continues his mission in stamping out a ring of paedophiles and other low life. He eventually retires having found he has a son from a past affair; he eventually marries his housekeeper and retires to Australia. Later his wife and son are both killed in a motor accident. Finally, an old friend in Portugal pleads his help to release his two kidnapped grand-children. In an abandoned house close to an important bridge, an old man stands with explosives strapped to his body. Marcel pondered on how his quest for vengeance had led him down so many painful roads and spanned by so many bridges.