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Spoilers from
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The Spoilers,
This is
Desmond's Drugs, Addicts and Traffickers story. Considering
the publication date, a time when hard drugs were certainly
known about, what today might be thought of as naivete must
have seemed pretty hard-hitting at the time. In fact
perhaps it is just our present-day familiarity with the
subject that makes it seem so.
As is to be expected the author puts his own unique angle
on the proceedings.
After brusque but rich business man Sir Robert Hellier has
lost his daughter to drugs he sets out to make life
difficult for the Doctor who was trying to ween her off
them before her death. At the start he blames Doctor Warren
for her fate, but gradually comes to realise that not
everything is so black and white. True to form the authors'
research has given him a solid foundation in the subject,
and indeed the science he comes up with is still an
eye-opener even in these jaundiced times.
Hellier wants to avenge his daughter's death and challenges
Warren to stop concentrating on the cure and do something
to prevent the drugs getting to the market in the first
place.
Warren has some useful friends, including Andy Tozier who
is an out of work mercenary, together they assemble a small
team and set off to plug the supply lines - all financed by
Hellier, whose bluff has been called.
It takes time for the team to inveigle themselves into the
drug-runner's confidence, but once there they make them a
proposition they can't refuse. Ever greedy for a quick
profit the gang swallows the bait.
Not only does the author manage to come up with a unique
way of getting drugs into a country unnoticed, he also
manages to take us on a tour around the Middle East,
visiting those hot, arrid places he seems to have enjoyed
so much.