Book launch of London’s Falling,Saturday October 20th 2012

 

Today on the day of its launch I want to say that London’s Falling is the book I always wanted to write. I actually worked in London for three years for the express purpose of writing a crime novel and this novel is the result of that. My novel is about a number of issues that have always captivated me. The intersection and overlap of organised crime, Islamic terrorism and political corruption is something which most countries in the west face including the UK and Australia. There are several intersecting plot lines including an extremist Imam who hold to the Hizb ut-Tahrir extremist Islamic philosophy which has a presence in this country of Australia. I wrote about this in a recent letter to the editor in the Australian following the Sydney disturbances presumably over an obscure American film. A cartoon, a book a film can bring on violent global protests but when a 14 year old girl who is standing up for the rights of females in education and more is shot not a whisper. I wanted to illustrate that kind of blatant, dangerous hypocrisy in my novel. I even had some first- hand experience on the matter in that at one point I worked as a teacher of religion that is Hinduism Sikhism and Islam Christianity but not Judaism, to students from a predominantly Hindu. Sikh and Islamic background although these learners got along amazingly well all things considered.

So I wanted to express my views and observations on serious and not so serious matters through the context of a novel. When a celebrity may of London, Katharine violet Witherspoon proposes an Interfaith Centre to be situated on the grounds of a Sufi Mosque for the purposes of reducing religious and racial tensions in London, she finds this is violently opposed by this radical Imam named Al-Ahir. Meanwhile an Australian itinerant teacher  named  Michael Prescott  is made an offer he can’t refuse by a Bulgarian gangster to run a number of Language Schools across London that are really a cover for the processing of illegal guest workers. These guest workers are exploited and some of them are groomed to perform terrorist attacks by this twisted Imam. The gangster Con and his sinister UK partner Nik try to curry favour with the mayor through generous contributions to her pet project the Interfaith centre. The plot lines intersect when a terrorist bomb attack is thwarted at the last minute only to find that a city wide riot ensues across London. throughout all this the authorities including the London Metro Police, The Home Office and a certain nosy reporter from one of the tabloids is closely watching events. After everything has concluding no one is quite the same again.

I do hope that those that read London’s Falling enjoy the experience as much as i had writing it.