The Last Stand Down

When hope is gone and boredom sets in, there’s only one thing left to do. But what is it?

Arthur Bayly dreams of a more exciting, adventurous life, to escape boredom of work, marriage and life. He dreams of a James Bond kind of life, while feeling oppressed and controlled by his pointless existence and daily activities. Then, one boring day, his dream slaps him in the face. Stood down from work in unnerving and suspicious circumstances, he stumbles into a nightmare of corruption and conspiracy at all levels of British society – police, politics and peerage. He somehow gathers a motley cast of characters from England, Scotland, New Zealand, Pakistan and elsewhere to help him restore finances, faith and family.

From Scotland, Mary dreams of romance and riches but she loses faith under the weight of London’s corporate life. She has a lingering affair with her sometimes-available boss but neither of her hopes eventuate. Then, unexpectedly, she becomes an unwitting agent in Arthur’s fall from grace. She becomes an unwilling accomplice and is forced to take sides in a ferocious game of greed for power and money; a game she doesn’t understand or want any part of. But she must chose and, while she’s focused on surviving, love turns up in its weirdly unexpected way.

The embezzling of millions of British tax payer funds, a free energy machine invented in New Zealand, and the desperate search to return Maori artefacts to their ancestral home complicate the fiasco as fists, guns and sides are drawn.

The story is drawn from the author’s experience as a corporate trainer for a London bank and reality is mixed with fiction in this thriller with a twist of love. It could easily have happened. It might also you shaken, not stirred.