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IN 1945 when the outcome of WW2 was certain, the United States dropped two atom bombs on two undefended cities, killing directly and by slow radiation poisoning over half a million innocent civilians. The USA has never apologized and still maintains today that killing those half a million innocents was the right thing to do. The men who flew their planes into the twin towers killing over 2,000 innocents, including twelve of my colleagues, also believed it was the right thing to do.
In an often binary world we seem to rationalize right and wrong by motive. We are told who the good guys are and, when they behave like the bad guys, we excuse their actions because the intent is good. Dropping those atom bombs was a necessary warning to the Soviets, and the Japanese people deserved to be punished, so let’s move on.
In my new novel, When the Siren Calls, it would be hard to separate the good guys from the bad guys based only on their actions. The story intertwines a contemporary romance and business thriller around three common threads – seduction, deception and betrayal. No matter whether it is in the boardroom or the bedroom, and no-matter whether the siren call is to the head or the heart, the story takes us into a world where everyone wants something from someone else, and both the principled and the unscrupulous will deceive and manipulate to get what they want.
The restless and neglected heroine, Isobel, is a modern day Lady Chatterley and yearns to escape a stagnant marriage and a workaholic husband. The enigmatic Jay seems to offer the exotic – the romance of her dreams and the opportunity for sexual experimentation. All around them is a band of hapless Brits lured to Tuscany by promises of riches and the siren call of life under the Tuscan sun. Ultimately, both lions and lambs will pay for their sins in a nightmare of deception and betrayal.
In a tense boardroom scene, an indignant Jay justifies his methods to his disillusioned business partner, Andy.
“In other words, a sort of ‘buy to let’ scam, then? said Andy.
“No, not a scam at all, as I said, everything was well intended.”
“Come off it,” snapped Andy. “You are not telling me the people buying this week are not being partly induced by a guaranteed rental scheme? It’s trumpeted in all the literature. That is deception.”
“First, none of us want to be in this situation. It has been forced upon us. Second, it is not deception. Yes, it may be manipulation; that I grant you, but manipulation is very different from deception.”
“Help me understand that, in case I ever need to explain it to a man in a blue uniform.”
“It is not semantics. Everyone in life is manipulating those around them all the time. Trying to get things done their way. You manipulate Kate and Kate manipulates you. Businesses and newspapers and governments are manipulating people en masse all the time. They just tell you that part of the story that they want you to know. They leave out the stuff that doesn’t fit with their agenda. It’s how things work. Some people are just better at it than others.”
“Sorry, Jay, I’m not buying it. There is such a thing as integrity. Or at least I thought there was.”
What I have tried to do in When the Siren Calls is let the reader understand motive through the point of view of each character. Even the darkest villain is the hero in his own story, his actions justified to himself by his own view of the world. It’s a technique that makes the novel different from the standard romance or thriller, with their unblemished heroines and dashing heroes, where we are mostly presented with a view of the world through a single or dominant point of view. If you like stories that make you think rather than feed you recipes, When the Siren Callscould be the book for you.
Thanks for popping in and I look forward to seeing you back soon