The Last Stand Down

Arthur Bayly has an ordinary life, marriage and job. He's bored. He hates them in his quaintly gentle way. He dreams of dangerous adventures. He arrives at work to find he is being stood down in suspicious circumstances and his dreams of being a James Bond come to fruition, all too dangerously.

Meanwhile, Mary had moved to London from Scotland, hoping for wealth and romance. Apart from a lingering affair with her sometimes-available boss, neither of these hopes eventuated ... till she and Arthur are thrown into an insurance scandal that involves Britain's foreign aid program, the suppression of a free-energy system, the London Olympic, corruption at all levels of politics, banking and the police force, the theft of stolen artefacts and an unlikely group of offenders and defenders from several countries.

I have a degree in accounting and economics and this book started itself after I lost my job as a corporate trainer for a London development bank, during the credit crunch of 2008. My subsequent investigations into that financial debacle revealed incompetence and conspiracy at many levels and it's clear we'll never know the truth. However, I'm prepared to speculate in a fictional work!

Several years previously, I was asked to write a book for a New Zealander who had invented a free energy system. However, the efforts of one of NZ's prime ministers and his death (probably murder) stymied that project. This unsettling experience is also sprinkled through this book.