He changed over to working for a consultant on Beverley Road and bought his first Lambretta, a GP 200 with ‘modifications’. You could hear him literally a mile away. Then he had the good fortune to be employed on the Humber Bridge Project where in-between drawing cartoons for the Bridge Newsletters he became a Civil Engineering Draffie. He was told that the job was just for 18 months when he joined, but he left it 4 years later, the Bridge being completed some years after that. Whilst on the project he became one of the first people to walk from Hessle to Barton once the grid mesh walk way had been slung across between the towers – amazing.

He went onto be an Architectural Technician and found work around Hull, designing quite a few of the buildings and landmarks in the region. He also spent some fantastic times and had many laughs working at BP Chemicals, Saltend.

Since then he has seen his family grow, but tragically his wife Carole lost her life in a road smash. Bruce has since re-married. He has lived and worked in Portugal, Norway, Australia and Greece and speaks several languages. He has run construction businesses and public houses, and has worked with some real characters, but he has always wanted to write. He made a few attempts for personal amusement but now he is completely bitten and writes with a view to becoming published.

 

 

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Lockerbie's Deception

To sample the early chapters of this book on Authonomy, click here.

Pan Am flight 103 brought terror and misery to the innocent payload of passengers looking forward to their Christmas holidays. When the avenging attack by the mighty USA left it's mark on the Libyan people, the West felt a wrong had been put right as they back-slapped and high-fived each other. But who would have forecast the impact years later that would emanate from a brooding, twisted man's hatred against the infidels as a result of that surgical strike on Gaddafi's secret encampment?

During their first holiday abroad a young working class couple’s two year old son is kidnapped from a Turkish beach, but the media huddle soon disperses. The father, a Britistani, takes it upon himself to find his son following the breakdown of the marriage to his English Rose. His journey begins at his mother’s roots in Quetta, Pakistan and whilst pursuing the search for his son he also unearths secrets about his own family.

Interpol have an interest too in locating this child and hope to break a worrying increase in ‘white child’ snatchings around the world linked to paedophilia . They use the unsuspecting father as a way of leading them to their own targets where this roller coaster voyage takes them to the caves of al-Qa'eda itself.

 

 

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God's Breath

To sample the early chapters of this book on Authonomy, click here.

Historians tell us that this was because Hitler caught a sexually transmitted disease from a Jewish prostitute in his early, formative years. Or, that in the economy of Germany following the First World War reparations, all of the wealth was harbored by the Jews. There is a truth in both statements, but was this sufficient cause to wipe out a whole race? Human nature can be an unpredictable whim but surely such extreme retribution does not balance? Was Hitler and his close followers’ bearers, or custodians of other knowledge; a knowledge that had become their religion, their unfaltering belief?

The only other people encumbered with this secret were in the Vatican. Pope Pius held meetings with the elite Reich members leading up to and during the Second World War. Allied intelligence had also become aware of the language, those words attributed as 'God's Breath'? The race was on to uncover, and then cover up the reasons for the horrific trail of misery imposed upon the Jews and their supporters by the Nazi zealots.

 

 

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Is this the new Dan Brown or just the Second Coming?

Scott Pack, the Head Buyer of Waterstones, once famously boomed “Who on earth could care less what Tim Adams of The Observer thinks about anything?”, his point being that upmarket critical opinion was no indicator of sales potential except perhaps by way of negative correlation (‘the more the praise, the less the sales’). No, what Scott was looking for was the next Dan Brown not an up-and-coming literary stylist.

He upset many an author and many a ‘quality’ journalist (not least Tim Adams), but he was right. Waterstones is not there to parlay up the elitist literary taste of the public. It is there to sell things – like coffee and cake, a few books, and Scott Pack.

As it happens, I have had a few dealings with Waterstones in Hull, and they have been great – really supportive of local Hull & East Riding artists. Rich Sutherland, who is about to become a published author himself with a collection of short stories called ‘The Unitary Authority of Ersatz’, was my main contact before he left for Hull Truck, and he even agreed to come out on a stormy Sunday lunchtime to set up a Waterstones stall for free to back my promotional event. Waterstones in Hull also harbours Peter Knaggs, a rather fine poet, and the even more excellent editor of ‘The Slab’ series of contemporary verse which are the best collections of poetry I have ever come across for their variety, freshness and energy – and consequently very hard to find.

Well, this time around, I can perhaps make both Mr. Pack and Waterstones of Hull happy. I think I may have discovered the new Dan Brown and, yes, he comes from Hull, the handsome, debonair and smooth-talking bugger.

His name is Bruce Essar (well, it isn’t actually, but that is his nom de plume) and he writes action-packed contemporary thrillers full of arresting and often harrowing scenes. His fellow authors over on Authonomy are all “Oh my God, Bruce. This is so gripping and so commercial. This has to be a best seller,” the same comment repeated about 98 times at the last count. Even better, they think his writing style manages to pack in a ton of excitement while leaving out all the frilly, psychological and landscapy bits, just like that of the Divine Dan himself.

Bruce’s first book is called ‘Lockerbie’s Deception’ and manages to tie up the Lockerbie disaster with the raid on Gaddafi’s tented hideaway in Libya, with al-Qa’eda and the international paedophile white slave trade. So far, so normal. However, one difference in Bruce’s work is the mass of compelling data he brings to the story so that he sounds like a CIA insider. The other difference is that he certainly knows how to deliver credibly blood-curdling scenes one after the other.

The story starts with the US Air Force strike against Gaddafi’s encampment at the Kufra Oasis on April 15th 1986 which rudely interrupts Ahmed Kabir as he rapes an innocent young girl who was until then a budding friend of his and who also happens to be the daughter of Gaddafi’s right hand man. Anyway, at the climax of the first scene, shortly after Ahmed’s own, the US missiles obliterate the tent complex blowing up anyone and everyone except most of Ahmed. He does lose his genitals, though, which is a taster for Bruce’s flare for symbolism. Recovering in a hospital bed in Switzerland, Ahmed swears revenge on the infidel as he most likely would having to use a colostomy bag for the rest of his life and having had his entire family wiped out. A few chapters later there he is as a surgeon himself amputating limbs from children with no medical justification whatsoever in furtherance of his evil plan which involves Osama bin Laden and the lead up to 9/11. I think we can safely call him an anti-hero but one followed unusually from an Arab camera angle if not exactly from an Arab perspective. Another standout scene is when a small child is snatched from his parents on a beach in Turkey. That will certainly scare most parents.

Bruce’s second book is called ‘God’s Breath’ which explores the well-attested but heretofore unexplained relationship between the Vatican of Pope Pius XII and Hitler’s Thousand Year Third Reich in Germany. While ‘Lockerbie’s Deception’ could well have been backed by the CIA’s more than ample publication budget (see Nick Davies’ ‘Flat Earth News’ to discover just how big that is), I doubt very much that ‘God’s Breath’ has the co-operation of the Vatican PR department as it depicts the esteemed institution as having risen to a level of systematic moral depravity that even the Borgia popes would have baulked at for at least five minutes. The plot also takes in the Second Coming and the very fashionable New Age belief in the lead up to the promisingly fateful year of 2012 that the early peoples of the earth were enslaved by a race of space travellers called the Anannuki who were anointed as their gods and who have secretly ruled over us ever since, currently via the Illuminati / Free Masons (see Indiana Jones IV and The Lost Symbol – or is that The Impossible Adventures of Steven Spielberg and Dan Brown?).

Does Bruce Essar deserve the fame and fortune I am predicting for him? Most literary types would say emphatically not. Bruce sure isn’t Ian McEwan, although most literary types are a bit sniffy about Ian these days too. However, as a writer in the 21st century you have to make a decision. Are you going to write the greatest, most elevated, most psychologically profound, most esoteric oeuvre of all time – total market opportunity of $US 3 (believe me) – or are you going to write some really exciting and compulsively page-turning stuff that the mass of people who read are actually likely to buy? It’s ‘Le Restaurant Gastronomique’ vs. Ronald McDonald all over again and we all know who wins in terms of sheer sales and profit potential.