A Long-Awaited Sequel

By my reckoning it’s about twenty years since I came up with the idea for The Handshaker.

It underwent many transformations before it finally appeared as a self-published novel in 2011. Crooked Cat Books took it over in January this year, on the promise of a sequel. That, too, has been a long time coming, but it is now in the final stages of editing, and ready to make its debut.

The Deep Secret, the tale of Felix Croft’s continuing struggle in the aftermath of The Handshaker murders, will be launched on Friday, October 25th.

The catalyst for The Handshaker was a little-known true story from pre-war Germany, in which criminal hypnotist, Franz Walter exerted control over a young woman only ever identified as Mrs E. in doing so, he apparently hypnotised her with a single touch on her arm. How is it done? Can it be done? The answer to those questions is The Deep Secret.

At the very outset, we find Croft living in the Canary Islands, when he receives a manuscript from a solicitor. Attached to it is a letter from a prison inmate explaining himself. Here is an extract from that letter.

***

I put together this manuscript from memory. That does not, however, mean there will be many inaccuracies. Apart from the war years, I have spent my whole life on the stage, delivering various acts to an appreciative public, and I have developed not only skills in escapology and a mastery of hypnotism, but also an eidetic memory.

There are certain segments which I have had to dramatise. They were not my experiences, but those of my old and trusted friend, Julius Reiniger. Likewise, there are those sections where it will be obvious that neither Julius nor I were present. My account of these incidents is based upon reports received from other parties. Franz Walter’s meeting with Anna Etzler, for example, is taken from a conversation between Walter and Julius, as is the later meeting between Walter and Hauptmann Lehrer. Captain Stokes related his discussions with senior military personnel to me. This does not mean the descriptions are inaccurate. Merely that they are second or third hand, and not eyewitness accounts of what happened.

Apart from these areas, everything happened as I have described.

Notwithstanding the adversity, no, enmity of our first meeting, Julius became the best friend I ever had, and it was to me that he entrusted The Deep Secret, a method of inducing instantaneous deep hypnosis with a single look, a single touch, not a word spoken, and without the compliance of the subject.

Such total control over the minds of our fellow men has been the desire of the power hungry since the dawn of time, and I make no excuses for numbering myself amongst them. I would not be here in this cell if I had not felt the urgent need for that power.

And yet, the professionals, the psychiatrists, the psychologists, those men who have made the study of the human mind, brain, consciousness, their life’s work, say that such control is no more than a wild fantasy, the basic fodder of the science fiction storyteller. I tell you that it is not a fantasy, it is not a daydream.

It is a reality.

***

The novel flashes back between shocking events in the here and now, to Heidelberg from the 1920s to the outbreak of war, and Great Britain in the aftermaths of the war. Like my other, more serious works, Voices and The Handshaker, The Deep Secret is no gentle STAC Mystery. It is a gritty, graphic, hard-hitting tale of violence and the greed for control.

***

The Deep Secret is published by Crooked Cat Books on October 25th 2013. There will be a launch event on Facebook and everyone is welcome.