watch
the No Identifiable Remains video trailer here
NO
IDENTIFIABLE REMAINS
‘For
a dead man, Mr Dreyfuss, you have surprisingly warm lips.’
One autumn morning,
Oliver Dreyfuss, celebrated chef and restaurateur, sets off
on a journey to Paris by train. Behind him he leaves his attractive
wife, Sonya, a successful businesswomen. Ahead of him waits
Karyn Baird, the designer of his new venture in Paris, La Mission.
The
train never reaches Paris. A freak accident causes it to crash
fifty miles north of the capital. The express is
severed in two and many of the coaches are obliterated
by an intense fire, including the one in which Oliver Dreyfuss
is travelling.
In the aftermath of the accident, forensic teams
declare that many of the dead will have ‘no identifiable remains’ and
are beyond even DNA recognition.
Oliver Dreyfuss is one of these.
News of Oliver’s
death sets in motion a chain of events on both sides of the Channel.
Sonya is furious,
since she
had no idea her husband was going to France. Karyn is
distraught and cannot accept that Oliver is dead.
Three stories now begin to move forward in parallel
finally to coalesce in a blizzard on a freezing mountain slope
in the dead of night.
No Identifiable
Remains is the story of identity lost and found and
of bringing a dead man back to life. It is full of anger
and hope. And the power of sex.
What makes Habiba
Popals steal a picture from the National Gallery in London?
What motivates her elaborate plot?
Habiba Popals, tall,
distinguished and rebellious, is from frontier country: Tooting
Bec, the uncompromising
suburb of south London.
Latif Popals, her father, old fashioned,
disdainful, is also from frontier country: The North West Frontier
of Pakistan.
Between the two frontiers there is severe conflict.
When
Latif Popals, against his better judgement, allows his daughter
to go on a summer art course at the National
Gallery, he sets in motion a
series of events
that he could never imagine.
Bad Marriage is the
story of elaborate revenge and unlikely love. It introduces
an extraordinary woman whose story will make you question your views
of right and wrong.
Click here
to listen
to John reading from Parallel Lives.
PARALLEL LIVES
When
psychotherapist Marjorie Nielson unexpectedly dies, she leaves
behind not only the intimate
details of her clients’ lives,
nestling cheek by jowl in the cabinet in her office, but also the mystery
of her own life
and death.
Her funeral brings together three of her clients, unknown to
one another but united by the indignation of suddenly being deserted
and
by the shock of
realising how
little they knew about the woman who shared their intimate secrets.
Toby
Browning, Perdita Landberg and Peter Harrington, their days darkened in different
ways by forces they could not understand.
In the quest to
find out about his lost therapist, Toby Browning is forced to confront his
own past and to discover the shocking truth about Marjorie
Nielson.
Along the way he is compelled to embrace, for the first time, the lives
of
others. What is it that Toby cannot face, that so disables Major Harrington
and causes
Perdita Landberg to doubt herself so much?
And who, or what, killed Marjorie
Nielson?
The events that
lie inside each of these people, unconsciously corroding them,
are eventually brought
to the surface. And the mystery of Marjorie
Nielson, catalyst
to their souls, is finally uncovered as her clients become detectives
to her history and their own demons.
How these three individuals
learn to see is at the root of Parallel
Lives. It is a story of how apparently ordinary events can cripple
the unwary and how major
trauma can reverberate down the years.
How much do we really know about
each other? Do our lives really touch, or are we happy to lead lives
in parallel, like bodies in a graveyard?
Hampstead
and Highgate Express
Caroline
Boucher Observer Food Magazine
