Experience relates that a great story begins with an evocative title.
A few outstanding titles come quickly to mind: The Old Man and The Sea, Treasure Island, The Da Vinci Code, Riders of the Purple Sage, A Tale of Two Cities, The Winds of War, and Murder on the Orient Express. There are many more.
Titles presage story lines. The topper, the fun part, comes in unlocking the story’s grid. Make no mistake: the stronger the title, the greater the attraction. Good titles foreshadow grandeur, or adventure, or mystery, or passionate love, or abhorrent loss. Sometimes, they evoke determined defiance. Yes, you read that correctly: determined defiance.
That term came to mind after I read an excellent novel titled One Tenth of The Law by Ray Peden, from Frankfort. There is an old adage that says possession is nine-tenths of the law. In One Tenth of the Law, you will quickly learn that the old maxim is not always accurate. The title does its job.
One Tenth of the Law is a story of heart-rending loss, heroic rescue, and massive intrigue, with a noteworthy conclusion. Much of the story occurs in Kentucky.
A chance encounter at a highway rest-stop finds Patrick Grainger the only witness to a daylight kidnapping of a young girl. After a daring rescue, an unexpected bond develops between Grainger and the girl’s family. That relationship and resulting conversations form the impetus that reveals insights about Grainger’s deceased family and a secret military-related conspiracy.
Grainger, a desert war veteran and a special-forces expert with a sharp eye and a good mind, believed his killing past was far behind him. For twelve years, he had grieved over the deaths of his wife and daughter. However, the father of the aforementioned kidnapping victim and a small-town newspaperman uncovers evidence, carefully concealed for more than a decade, which supposes that the fateful fire that killed Grainger’s family was hardly an accident.
According to the author, “As the blocks topple, the identities of the killers and their roles in a massive wartime conspiracy come to light. The deadly gamesmanship threatens to bring down a powerful and ruthless multinational empire (an enterprise named Wyndham-Lynch) that will stop at nothing to protect its interests.
“Ordinary people forced into extraordinary circumstances become unwilling participants in a lethal game of high-stakes intrigue, climaxing with one stunning personal twist none of them ever saw coming.”
This well-written story, reminiscent of Robert Ludlum’s efforts, aptly morphs from a noteworthy rescue into a tale of international conspiracy. Quickly, Peden’s protagonist, Patrick Grainger, is knee-deep in intrigue and deception that turns his life inside out and brings the twelve-year-old deaths of his wife and baby girl clearly into focus.
Peden notes that his “book is for every mother or father that has considered the agony of a son or daughter kidnapped or murdered. How would we cope, make it through each day? How could we begin to find our child? Or in the worst case, how far would we go to avenge [a child’s] death? We all need heroes. Secretly, I think we all want to be heroes.”
Reading One Tenth of the Law soon exposes Patrick Grainger as the kind of hero many will admire.
As Peden states it, Patrick Grainger is a “resourceful, never-quit alpha-male with dangerous skills and no limits.” His determined defiance pushes him to make things right.
Peden’s style is succinct, his prose a delight, his dialogue believable. Here’s a sample: “How do you put the pieces of your life back together when something terrible and unexpected slams into you? You analyze and rationalize, tell yourself that good will eventually triumph over evil.” To see if it does, read One Tenth of the Law.
I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. It is an imaginative summer read.
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Donald Then, a novelist and experienced editor and journalist, is NKyTribune’s literary editor. He reviews books written by local authors or those with a Northern Kentucky setting. Reach him at author@djamesthen.com. Visit his website at www.djamesthen.com.