Deathbed Confessions

The money that the Mammy gave us lasted only as far as Fishguard. The ferry tickets and a bowl of soup at the dockside accounted for all but a few pennies. For my sake Jack remained cheerful throughout the crossing, although I was sick for the greater part of it. It was just as well that we didn't eat before we left Rosslare because the precious food would have been bequeathed to the waves for sure. Watching two weatherworn old Irishmen drinking Guinness before dawn did little to appease my rolling stomach. Apart from a fishing trip on Uncle Timmy's boat down at Kinsale, I knew nothing of the sea. I'd always wondered why we should sing for those in peril on the sea at Mass on Sunday but now I understood. "Are you OK Liam?" asked Himself as I gorged on my vegetable broth. I smiled and nodded. Twas only once I had a full belly that the sense of adventure seized me. I had rarely left Ballycraich and only twice visited Cork, but now here I was, supping soup with my big brother and not knowing what God or foul fortune held for us. "Have ya got nutting to say for yerself?" he asked me. I thought and shook my head. My fifteen years had taught me to keep my opinion to myself in our household. You wouldn't want to upset my Pa with a quenched thirst on him. So begins the story of two runaway brothers whose violent lives are to touch so many others. And, when that story resurfaces forty years later, Jack Daly needs to discover just how his late mother was involved with the brothers and three gangland murders. This colourful and engrossing story captures the true essence of the sixties in London, where the author grew up. As the story follows Jack on his journey of discovery, the plot is interlaced with the Deathbed Confessions of the main characters, whose lives were ripped apart by the events of two summers in the sixties.

About the Author :
Following the success of his first novel Lost in a hurricane, Peter Larner turned to his roots in London's East End for the sequel. Peter was born in Poplar and grew up in the blitz-torn borough before moving to Upminster in Essex in 1987. In 1966, when the book is set, he was 17 and living in an area largely controlled by the Kray brothers. So he has first-hand experience of the environment he has created in Deathbed Confessions. In the second Jack Daly novel, the vacillate hero of Lost in a hurricane, has to deal with the death of his mother who had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The cathartic experience of clearing the loft of her house leads Jack to discover secrets from his mothers past life in the East End of London. The story is set in two time zones. Whilst Jack attempts at unravelling the mystery of his mother's involvement with two runaway brothers from Ireland, the story of what actually happened forty years before is revealed through the Deathbed Confessions of the main characters. How was Jack's mother connected to three gangland murders and, more importantly to our hero, who was his real father? Jack is helped in his quest for the truth by his feisty Italian wife Ludo and his life-long friend Tonka Thompson. The story is set in Essex, where Jack and Ludo live, and East London. The author is writing a series of books based on his unlikely hero, Jack Daly. "I have already started work on the third book The Unfolding Path, and each book gets increasingly darker. In The Unfolding Path Jack is drawn into the shadowy world of missing persons, kidnap and intrigue. What the press said about Lost in a hurricane: "The plotting is complex (although it is by no means labyrinthine), but this is no airport lounge fodder thriller." "OK, let's be clear, it's not Heller's Catch-22 or Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, but it is better than any of the ghost-written celebrity 'novels' that clog up the Best Sellers charts." "For a first effort, Lost in a hurricane is bloody good."