Michael Spinney

An Inhuman Word Michael Spinney

It's 1947 and Britain is rushing to jettison the Indian Raj, and in so doing unleashes a genocidal division into which stumbles a young Muslim boy whose traumatic experience will change everything.

The young Pakistani grows up to become The Colonel and the architect of an intricate and destructive plot to revenge his family and his country for the horrors and injustices inflicted by the Indians and British during Partition.

In England Leda and Peter meet at a house party and embark upon a passionate love affair that results in the birth of twin daughters, Helen and Clemmie, whose lives will become inextricably mixed with the world of The Colonel as his revenge approaches fulfilment.

At the centre of the story is the beautiful Helen unwittingly drawn into a horror that unfolds with increasing complexity when it becomes a race against time to save her and foil the devious schemes of The Colonel.

Events spiral around the globe involving abduction, beheading, terrorism, cyberfraud, internet subversion, assassination and the destabilisation of an economy, all driven by greed and revenge, because it is revenge that lies at the core of this novel - revenge within families, religion, politics and between nations.

Seneca the Younger once wrote, 'Revenge is an inhuman word', a theme first explored long ago by Homer in The Iliad, and also in this story where mankind's capacity for inhumanity seems undiminished, although in the modern world there is a glimmer of hope through courage and devotion.