Novel: The Cradle Plank Affair
The Cradle Plank Affair is my first fictional novel to be published in Spring/Summer 2025 (although I have many non-fiction art books and magazine articles to my credit.)
I have nine other novels in various states of editing or 'market ready' completion.
This novel, 'The Cradle Plank Affair', is set in Scotland and at a disused dam at the Norwegian/Russian border. It has been thirty years since the Second World War ended, but there are remnants of the Nazi chaos undergoing revival and seeking repercussion.
Cradle-planking’, the remodeling of infant’s skulls by binding at birth, has its roots as a rite of passage in ancient civilizations.
The ‘Lebensborn Orphanages’ of WW2 were Hitler’s attempt to steal ‘racially-pure’ babies of subjugated races and indoctrinate them from birth to become the leaders of the ‘Thousand Year Reich’– Hitler’s plan for global German domination by his racially engineered ‘Master-Race’.
Now, thirty years after the war, these two elements are being woven together in a surgical facility under a disused dam deep in the forests at the Russian- Norwegian border. The stolen children, all highly empathetic twins, have reached the height of their adult intellectual maturity. One of each sibling pair is held captive under the dam, the other, after the best education available from the highest educational establishments worldwide, is now supreme in an international leadership position of commercial, diplomatic or political power. The project is under the combined control of British MI6 and the Russian KGB; the science is masterminded by ex-wartime surgeons Kurt Gagnon and Alex Uhlberg. The preparation is almost complete; launch day is only days away. When the indoctrinated brainpower of ‘Alaska’, Uhlberg’s daughter; is sent via the captive twins to their sibling targets it will influence global outcomes and future alliances when the empathy is shared. Alaska is the prime ‘fount of all wisdom’ for the experiment and its success depends on her willingness to be the human guineapig in transferring artificial intelligence to the wider world of international dynamics. The two surgeons are entrenched opposites in the ethical consequences of their work: Gagnon only interested in his obsession for personal power, Uhlberg only with his wish to benefit mankind. Newly qualified doctors, fiancés Laura and James, on holiday in Scotland before starting their careers as general medical practitioners, unwillingly inherit the clue to the whereabouts of the code needed to launch the takeover of world power. Without the code the experiment will fail; as possessors of their knowledge, they are in extreme danger. They are coerced by intelligence operatives to accompany Alaska by ship to the Arctic Circle to confirm the clue in an Ice Hotel near the experimental facility in the fastnesses of Norway, all the time being shadowed by malign sources intent on discovering the code. Can the young doctors get ‘Alaska’ back to the Norwegian dam in time to trigger the ‘sleeper’ brains for the good of mankind or will Gagnon and his bosses prevail in their power grab? Doctor Laura is an empath; she and Alaska realize that they can combine their brainpower using mutual clairvoyance to fight Gagnon’s threat. Alaska knows that Gagnon has a sinister alternative agenda. Unknown to her, her own twin sister was stolen by Gagnon when their mother died in childbirth and her father was absent. Terrifyingly, she first meets the salvaged, living ‘Starchild’ brain of her long- dead twin on the day of the world launch. Both brains are needed to successfully transfer manipulated intelligence to the ‘sleepers’, but they are in ethical and moral opposition because of Gagnon’s indoctrination. Alaska must call on the brain power of a terrified Laura to try to keep the experiment ‘pure’, while James struggles to preserve their sanity and survival The project is close to collapse under the combined intellectual surge from the opposing forces. Can they keep focused in the face of enormous malevolence. As Gagnon attempts to abscond with the ‘Starchild’ brain, he opens the dam’s sluicegates leaving all to perish. In the ensuing chaos, an unexpected twist brings the American Central Intelligence Agency into the plot with startling results and leads us further into the 'Starchild Saga'..
The Cradle Plank Affair is the first novel in the saga. The sequel 'Mappa Mundi, is well underway at the early editing stage.
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