Books
Salt of Their Blood
Synopsis
Stuart's feckless life suddenly comes into sharp focus as he begins a sweeping, illicit love affair with Kathy. The daughter-in-law of his mother's best friend. The lovers are reckless, indiscreet and hopelessly in love. But all the time Stuart is haunted but events from twelve years earlier. As a young boy he watched a dark love affair blossom between his uncle and Shirley, Kathy's mother-in-law. This affair somehow becomes the trigger for two apparently unconnected incidents. First Stuart hears the screams of a mechanic as a five-ton bus comes crashing down on his head in what the coroner described as a dreadful accident. Within a couple of weeks, Stuart's best friend disappears. Stuart has always believed that there was a connection between his friend vanishing and the mechanic's death.
Twelve years later and a chance encounter with the dead mechanic's wife, confirms his long-held suspicions of a connection between these incidents. Just to complicate things further, Kathy is the sister of his missing friend and the wife of a man he's hated for most of his life. Unbeknown to Stuart, the cuckolded man not only knows a lot about those events from twelve years ago, he knows about his wife's affair as well. When the body of his friend is found, Stuart suddenly finds out that his lover is being blackmailed by her father-in-law. With this knowledge comes the growing realisation that the affair is about to end like some violent Greek tragedy.