Purgatory Road

Peter J. Earle

• 

Lovereading Price £8.99

RRP: £8.99

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Why I wrote this book

Why do I breathe? I would die if I didn't. I have so many stories in me I'd explode if I didn't write.
 
Why different? I hope my stories are the same as any other un-put-downable, action-packed adventure story of Africa!
 
Because they hunger for an un-put-downable, action-packed adventure story of Africa!

Synopsis

John Stafford, a stock-feed salesman heading home late at night, is caught in a speed trap. He refuses to pay the R1000 bribe demanded by the two traffic cops, and ends up shooting them.

Arriving at his small farm near Stutterheim, he finds that his wife, Helen, has left him for another man. To escape the law and his shattered personal life, he obtains another passport and vehicle to use to head for a new life in the Rhodesian Army. His plan to convince everyone of his death involves buying and learning to use a scuba set in Durban where he meets and has a relationship with an Australian girl, Janice Parker.

Stafford discovers that evidence has been found regarding the gun used by him. Suspecting that his time is now limited, he drops his gun into his farm dam. Despite a reunion with a remorseful Helen, he carries out his plan to convince the world that he has drowned at sea and leaves for the Rhodesian bush war. His friend, police sergeant Ludi Prinsloo, is given the task of taking over the case of the two murdered traffic officers.

En route, Stafford’s convoy is attacked by terrorists. His vehicle is destroyed, but he manages to obtain a weapon and helps divert attention from part of the convoy that is escaping. When he is recovering in hospital, he is questioned by de Bruyn, a military intelligence officer and is offered, and accepts, a ranch section-managers job by a rancher, Alex Barnes, who had been travelling in the convoy.

Stafford settles into ranch life but remains terrified that he will be found out. However, he is still in contact with Janice Parker who visits him there. Although a strong bond forms between them, he has to let her go, unable to accept that they have a future, based on his false identity and his lingering emotional ties to Helen.

Although he acquits himself in a fight with terrorists on the ranch, his employer and the intelligence office, de Bruyn, are beginning to find suspicious holes in Stafford’s story regarding his past. Stafford nearly loses his life in another attack on the ranch but manages to save Barnes daughter-in-law and grandchildren. In gratitude, Barnes and de Bruyn convince Prinsloo, who has found the gun used in the crime and comes to Rhodesia to follow up his investigations, that Stafford was killed in the skirmish.

Prinsloo returns to Stutterheim to pick up on his slowly blossoming relationship with Helen.

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