Shay Elliott and Collected Short Stories — John Flanagan

In his collection of short stories, the author charts the life of Shay Elliott, Ireland's first professional cyclist, as he struggles to compete against riders in a peloton saturated with performance enhancing drugs. After he returned to Ireland he died in a shotgun accident while making plans to coach amateur cyclists. We are taken to a meeting of Washington politicians, which culminated in the unlawful invasion of Iraq; a tragic, obscene war encouraged by Pentagon hawks and self-serving gentlemen of the right. Commandeered oil, outsourced waterboarding and enhanced torture techniques in defiance of Article One of the Geneva Convention, are imprimatured in cautious Machiavellian dialogue. We witness the insane cluster bombing of the virtually defenceless city of Baghdad; with its medieval clay and plaster dwellings that crumble to dust in air raids. We visit broken, mutilated children in Baghdad's Al Kindi Hospital. We are taken to a chateau on the outskirts of Paris, the headquarters of the Aryan Brotherhood in France. The Aryans have devised a new strategy, a panacea to erase the simmering tensions of class warfare in French society. The goal is to create a new social order by restoring the privileged bourgeois to power; condemning the general populace to serfdom, through the science of eugenics. In 'Up at the Palace' Borstal detainees face the darkness of unspoken cruelties; a dignitary of the church faces his demons. We visit Alaska, the last remaining wilderness left on earth. Raging storms in the Bering Sea threaten life and limb aboard the good ship ' Tacoma' A super sleuth, Marc Claudel, of the French Surete, becomes involved in terrorism and murder.