by Terry Morgan
The Professor was still worrying about his effect on Carl when there was a heavy banging on his door and Sam’s loud voice.
"Professor, come quickly. It's Carl.”
The Professor stood up and opened the door. Sam was standing there, breathing heavily, his grey uniform darkened by wet patches on his back and shoulders. Rain drops ran down his red cheeks.
“I took him to the gate, Professor,” he panted. “He was very quiet. I watched him walk across the road and then I saw him take something from the trash bin by the bus stop. It was a gun, Professor. He must have put it there before he arrived because we search all visitors. He shot himself. In the pouring rain. He just put it to his head and shot himself. There was a loud bang. I ran over. He was lying on the wet grass with blood pouring from his head. He was alive and he opened his eyes and looked up at me. I got down very close and heard him speaking. He said, 'Say thank you to my uncle. Uncle Harry was always right.' And then his head fell back and hit the road. He's dead, Professor."
THE END
About the author:
Terry Morgan has been writing stories and poetry for over twenty-five years, mostly while he “lived out of a suitcase”, travelling with his own exporting business. Having visited around eighty countries during that time he now lives with his Thai wife, Yung, in Petchabun, Thailand with occasional visits back to friends and family in the Forest of Dean and the Cotswold Valleys around Stroud in the UK. He mostly writes novels with a strong international, business and political flavour and occasional satire.
Website: www.tjmbooks.com
Full length novels by Terry Morgan all published on Smashwords:
An Old Spy Story
The old spy in “An Old Spy Story” is octagenerian, Oliver (“Ollie”) Thomas. During a long career spent trying to earn an honest living with his own export business, Ollie was also, reluctantly, carrying out parallel assignments in Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere only loosely connected to British Intelligence. But, by using threats and blackmail, his controller, Major Alex Donaldson, was forcing Ollie to help run his own secret money making schemes that included arms shipments to the IRA through Gadaffi and Libya, money laundering in Africa and assassination.
Now aged eighty six, recently widowed and alone Ollie still struggles with guilt and anger over his past and decides to make one last attempt to track down and deal with Donaldson.
“A masterful tale by someone who knows exactly what he is writing about.”
“A wonderful and moving love story from an elderly man’s perspective is beautifully woven into it and the ending is masterful.”
“I enjoyed it – exciting, endlessly beguiling and fun.”
“Thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish. A remarkable book from a writer who has clearly been there and done it. Easy reading.”
Whistleblower
Huge amounts of international aid money are being stolen by those at the heart of the political establishment. Ex-politician, Jim Smith, threatened and harassed into fleeing abroad for accusations of fraud secretly returns to renew his campaign. A realistic thriller covering events in the USA, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia and a sensitive study of a stubborn and talented man who steadfastly refuses to fit into the stereotype of a successful businessman and a modern politician.
"Highly convincing.......This could all be happening right now. Another realistic and highly entertaining story...."
."Whistleblower", by Terry Morgan, is an international thriller that stretches from England to Thailand with many stops in between. The plot centre’s around the timely topic of international aid money and the criminals who feed on it. The hero, the story's whistle-blower, is British ex-politician Jim Smith, and the story follows him around the globe as he seeks to put a stop to the corruption. Morgan, a world traveller who now resides in Thailand, knows his locations well. Cities in Italy and Africa come alive, and Jim Smith's home in off-the-beaten-path Thailand is wonderfully described, allowing readers to feel like they're there--this is no easy thing to do, and the authenticity of the various settings is a real strength of the book. Another strength includes the protagonist. Smith is not a typical hero. He's older and lacks the suaveness and action-hero credentials of a James Bond or Jason Bourne, but he more than makes up for it with his intelligence and depth--a big pleasure in the book is being invited into this man's life as he tries to pick up the pieces after an underhanded campaign aimed at ruining him. The plot moves along briskly, and the technology, players (politicians, intelligence agencies, criminals), and small details about the finance industry all add up to a novel that’s rich in credibility and intrigue. Anyone interested in seeing the world from the comfort of a good armchair should read Morgan's book." (AMAZON)
An Honourable Fake
At age fourteen, Femi Akindele, an orphaned street boy from the Makoko slum in Lagos, Nigeria, decided to call himself Pastor Gabriel Joshua. Unqualified and self-taught and now in his mid-forties, Gabriel has become a flamboyant, popular and highly acclaimed international speaker on African affairs, economics, terrorism, corruption and the widespread poverty and economic migration that results.
Gabriel wants changes but, in his way, lie big corporations, international politics and a group of wealthy but corrupt Nigerians financing a terrorist organisation, the COK, with one purpose in mind – the overthrow of the democratically elected Nigerian President and the establishment of a vast new West African state.
On Gabriel’s side, though, are his loyal boyhood friend Solomon, a private investigator of international corporate fraud and the newly appointed head of the Nigerian State Security Service Colonel Martin Abisola.
“A rare sort of political thriller – a black African hero.”
“Accomplished and knowledgeable – a class follow up to Whistleblower.”
Vendetta
Eccentric, untidy Oxford University Professor “Eddie” Higgins has become the ‘scientific adviser’ to a local company, Vital Cosmetics, run by its new and vivacious chief executive, Isobel Johnson. It doesn’t begin well. “Yours is an industry dogged by exaggerated claims, impossible claims and false claims,” he tells her. Can they work together and so expose the Russian and Chinese gang exploiting Vital Cosmetics and other companies for counterfeiting, money-laundering and drug smuggling?
The Malthus Pandemic
Daniel Capelli is a private investigator of international commercial crime.
Armed with an unusually vague remit from a new client, an American biotechnology company, to investigate the theft of valuable research material but motivated largely by a private desire to see a Thai girlfriend, Anna, he travels to Bangkok for an infectious diseases conference. Here, he discovers that several virologists have also disappeared. One of them, David Solomon, is known for extreme views on the need for direct action to reduce the world's population.
As the investigation deepens, he rapidly uncovers a sinister plot to deliberately spread a deadly new virus, the Malthus A virus, specifically created by Solomon. But Solomon needs funds and help to spread it. With sporadic outbreaks of the disease already in Thailand, Nigeria and Kenya, Capelli finds two other characters - Doctor Larry Brown, an American doctor working at the USA Embassy in Nigeria, and Kevin Parker, an academic and expert on the history and economics of population control - have also arrived at similar conclusions but from different angles.
Calling on help from another close friend, Colin Asher - a London based private investigator - it soon becomes clear that Solomon is being supported by a rich American with a history of fraud, embezzlement and murder and a secretive Arab healthcare company with a ready-made international distribution network. Their plan: To help spread the Malthus A virus and make huge profits by marketing ineffective or counterfeit drugs.
But with his cover blown by the murder of another colleague, the charismatic Kenyan detective Jimmy Banda, and with increasing fears that the virus is about to be released Capelli, Anna an
d his colleagues face another problem - persuading UK and USA politicians and the international agencies responsible for bioterrorism and commercial crime, to believe them and respond in time.
"Anchored firmly in the present, no high-tech Bond style gadgets, just good old-fashioned detective work. Gritty descriptions of the international locations, compelling plot and poignant rants about the inadequacy of democratic institutions and persuasive insight on the inner workings of the global establishment. Easy reading and difficult to put down once started. Enjoyable read."
Short Stories:
The Red Lantern is a selection of six short stories about international crime, corruption and terrorism taken from five of the author’s full-length novels – An Old Spy Story, Whistleblower, Vendetta, An Honourable Fake and Bad Boys.
Humour & Satirical:
God’s Factory
Terry Morgan writes mainly serious novels with a strong international background but intersperses it with less serious satire and humour like ‘God’s Factory’.
