Games with the General

...Duty, and only duty, compelled me to do what I did.

The more I write...the more that fact will be confirmed in the eyes of all sane and fair-minded people who may, though not necessarily in my lifetime, get a chance to see it.

I am not by nature a scribbler. I am an amateur in this regard and I have always had little patience with amateurs. Or with scribblers, for that matter - as some of them might well testify if they were still alive to do so.

However, as I have always done, I shall endeavour to cast off doubt and rise to the needs of the moment.

Where should I begin?Set in the 22nd century, in the (at first, unamed) capital city of a small, globally-warmed country colonised by the Chinese, a military dictator is placed under arrest by nationalist revolutionaries who have taken power, none too securely.

General Raoul Doon had been in control of the country as head of the military government.

Now in prison, he decides to pen his memoirs in an attempt to explain the alleged psychopathic misdeeds of his regime were indeed a necessary device, created in order to bring stability to his strife-torn country. He especially wishes to justify The Games, held in a massive stadium and where a crowd of many thousands of thugs and other anti-social elements fight to the death."Games With the General" is a political thriller, tough in content.

Concerned with the major issues of our time - globalisation, terrorism, climate change - this is an epic tale with enough masterly turns in its tale to satisfy the most severe of readers.

It deserves to rank alongside Richard Condon's "The Manchurian Candidate" and Ward Just's "In the Kingdom of Fear", as a novel which holds a harsh mirror of reality against the spin and nonsense of today's political culture.