Praefectus Praetorio
R.I.P. Brother of the Quill
Dear Reader, I again will be presenting, for your diversion, an extended story from my fevered brain. The form is a mystery romance. It will develop slowly and carry the Reader (I hope) on an entertaining and mostly pleasant adventure. It is mostly not concentrated on sex and torture. However, in keeping with this forum's name and my own twisted, prurient interests, there will be some Bondage, Discipline, and Sado-Masochism. But it will be far from wall-to-wall coverage. There will be a little consensual sex, but not described in pornographic detail.
I bid you to approach this work in a state of mind that craves escape, engaging characters, and suspense. It will be extended. I suggest you embrace it as if reading Dickens, whose long works were serialized in monthly magazines. Or even more relevantly, as a reader of The Strand Magazine from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth-century London. There you could read the Hercule Poirot stories by Agatha Christie, the Jeeves stories of P. G. Wodehouse, and most especially the short stories of Arthur Conan Doyle as he introduced to the world's first and only "Consulting Detective," Sherlock Holmes. In those monthly publications, beginning in August 1901 and concluding in April 1902, he serialized his third and most famous novel featuring Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was a book that told a hair-raising mystery/adventure and evoked a sense of place and atmosphere. Readers lined up for blocks outside the magazine's offices, waiting to get the next installment.
This story is naturally a far cry from such quality of fiction and detection. However, with the help of the lovely and widely talented Eulalia Mctaggert, I have tried to bring the beautiful countryside and lilting tongues of Gallovidia alive to my Readers while teasing with a little mystery story. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing.
Introduction
Alex Maxwell was a mild-mannered criminal profiler from Madison, WI. When he decides to take a vacation in his family's ancestral home in Gallovidia, Scotland, he has no idea of either the romance or the danger that awaits him there.
In Gallovidia, Alex meets a comely and mysterious Scottish Lassie, Jessie McTaggert. While these two are about as different as any two can be, Alex is immediately captivated by her beautiful eyes and lilting voice. On the other hand, Jessie is suspicious and resentful of the outlander with his rude American manners. However, gradually, a mutual and undeniable attraction grows between them.
The relationship between these two develops against the background of a clandestine worldwide criminal conspiracy operating out of the Scottish Lowlands. While hiking deep into the Northern Forest, Alex spies what might be a crime committed in the distance. Unable to convince local police that there was a crime, the two proceed to investigate it themselves. The pursuit of a possible serial kidnapper of young women leads them to dark and unexpected evil in the seemingly peaceful and idyllic Scottish Lowlands and a criminal enterprise that extends far beyond the coasts of Great Britain.
Gallovidia is sometimes called the Garden of Scotland, and justly so. The region, lies on a south-facing slope with its feet lapped by the Solway and its shoulders propped against beautiful ranges of mountains. From these uplands, broad silver rivers wind south through undulating pastures and tracks of woodland, a wonderful farming country, to run at length into the Solway Firth. And far across the water, or miles of rippled sand when the tide is out, are the blue hills of Cumbria
The pursuit throws together this ‘odd couple’ until a growing respect and then affection blossoms. Will they overcome their differences to find love? Will their investigation uncover the mastermind of a worldwide criminal conspiracy? Will the kidnapper catch the Lassie before they catch him?
This thrilling story invites comparison with Kidnapped and The Lady Vanishes. Not since the Five Red Herrings and the Thirty-Nine Steps has a book used the beautiful countryside of Lowlands of Scotland in such a puzzling and terrifying mystery. You will not be able to put it down!
I bid you to approach this work in a state of mind that craves escape, engaging characters, and suspense. It will be extended. I suggest you embrace it as if reading Dickens, whose long works were serialized in monthly magazines. Or even more relevantly, as a reader of The Strand Magazine from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth-century London. There you could read the Hercule Poirot stories by Agatha Christie, the Jeeves stories of P. G. Wodehouse, and most especially the short stories of Arthur Conan Doyle as he introduced to the world's first and only "Consulting Detective," Sherlock Holmes. In those monthly publications, beginning in August 1901 and concluding in April 1902, he serialized his third and most famous novel featuring Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was a book that told a hair-raising mystery/adventure and evoked a sense of place and atmosphere. Readers lined up for blocks outside the magazine's offices, waiting to get the next installment.
This story is naturally a far cry from such quality of fiction and detection. However, with the help of the lovely and widely talented Eulalia Mctaggert, I have tried to bring the beautiful countryside and lilting tongues of Gallovidia alive to my Readers while teasing with a little mystery story. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing.
Introduction
Alex Maxwell was a mild-mannered criminal profiler from Madison, WI. When he decides to take a vacation in his family's ancestral home in Gallovidia, Scotland, he has no idea of either the romance or the danger that awaits him there.
In Gallovidia, Alex meets a comely and mysterious Scottish Lassie, Jessie McTaggert. While these two are about as different as any two can be, Alex is immediately captivated by her beautiful eyes and lilting voice. On the other hand, Jessie is suspicious and resentful of the outlander with his rude American manners. However, gradually, a mutual and undeniable attraction grows between them.
The relationship between these two develops against the background of a clandestine worldwide criminal conspiracy operating out of the Scottish Lowlands. While hiking deep into the Northern Forest, Alex spies what might be a crime committed in the distance. Unable to convince local police that there was a crime, the two proceed to investigate it themselves. The pursuit of a possible serial kidnapper of young women leads them to dark and unexpected evil in the seemingly peaceful and idyllic Scottish Lowlands and a criminal enterprise that extends far beyond the coasts of Great Britain.
Gallovidia is sometimes called the Garden of Scotland, and justly so. The region, lies on a south-facing slope with its feet lapped by the Solway and its shoulders propped against beautiful ranges of mountains. From these uplands, broad silver rivers wind south through undulating pastures and tracks of woodland, a wonderful farming country, to run at length into the Solway Firth. And far across the water, or miles of rippled sand when the tide is out, are the blue hills of Cumbria
The pursuit throws together this ‘odd couple’ until a growing respect and then affection blossoms. Will they overcome their differences to find love? Will their investigation uncover the mastermind of a worldwide criminal conspiracy? Will the kidnapper catch the Lassie before they catch him?
This thrilling story invites comparison with Kidnapped and The Lady Vanishes. Not since the Five Red Herrings and the Thirty-Nine Steps has a book used the beautiful countryside of Lowlands of Scotland in such a puzzling and terrifying mystery. You will not be able to put it down!
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