My new resolution: don't engineer the killing of helpless hospital patients

This blog has now been silent for more than a month. The reason is that I was poleaxed by what I will call, euphemistically, one of life's accidents. The month I spent in hospital allowed me to appreciate how professional, competent and kindly the French hospital system is. Lying awake at night, pinned to a hospital bed and being dependent on the kindness of strangers, gives you a lot of time to  reflect on what you should have done differently in life, and how you are going to change if ever you get out of the situation you find yourself in. One of the things I began to regret was that, in my first novel, the murder victim was a person lying helpless in a hospital bed, a person who found himself in more or less the same situation I was now in.




A lot of stuff has been written about about the author's responsibility to his or her victims. My new resolution is never again to have one of my murderers kill a vulnerable patient. The victim should at least have a fighting chance to protect him or herself. To show you what nourished this reflection, below you will find the first chapter of my novel Another Life.

HIS FINGERS were clenched
high around the smooth handle of the kitchen knife that had been driven into
his heart, the heel of his hand towards him. It had gone in too easily. It was
his knife but he hadn’t had the strength to parry its use against him. He
should never have shown it.



Death would soon be upon him. The long-robed hellish
figure backed slowly away from him, abandoning him in this hospital bed. Behind
him the lights of the transfusion equipment flashed. Should he try to pull out
the knife or leave it where it was? He left it in. A warm tear filled his right
eye. It moved to the edge, hung there for an instant and then rolled down his cheek
to his neck. He shuddered.


His thoughts jumped haphazardly through the film of
his life: the images of the pleasant, the horrific, the shameful; the cuddles
and the warmth of his mother’s love; the carefree childhood in Manchester; the
drugs and the riots; the women and children he had wanted to love but whom he
had nearly always abused and abandoned; the Sodomite Canal; the uncontrollable
drinking of his first years back in the West of Ireland; the killing; the
Sodomite Prison; the inability of his own brother to understand him; his
salvation through the finding of the One True God. and His Prophet.

Who could have guessed it would end in this way, at
this moment, in the time when he was beginning to succeed at living
righteously? It was not up to him to question Why? Nobody knows the day, nobody
knows the hour, what is important is to be prepared at all times. Thank God: he
was better prepared now than he had ever been.

This world was the one and only chance to earn the
gift of Paradise. Had he been able to do
enough in the last few months to earn entry to eternity in a place of delight
or would he still have to face a passage through the fires of Hell? In any
case, it was now too late to do more. Except to say the prayer, his own prayer,
“God is Great and
Abraham, the son of Amatlai, is his prophet!”

After a sharp intake of breath, he breathed out for
the last time.

 My novels, The Imitation of Patsy Burke and Another Life, can be purchased from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr and Amazon.de in either print or electronic versions.



Read the Kirkus Review of The Imitation of Patsy Burke



Find my novels by following any of the links below:



Amazon.com (Amazon in the United States)

Amazon.co.uk (Amazon in the U.K. and Ireland)

Amazon.fr (Amazon in France)

Amazon.de (Amazon in Germany)



Print and electronic versions can also be purchased from Barnes & Noble in the United States. Find them by following the link below:



barnesandnoble.com