"The Thin Line of Reason"

Desire! Obsession! Illusion!

What kind of man wears a dead man's face?

"The Thin Line of Reason" is an adult suspense thriller set in Nanaimo and Vancouver. It is a page turner from start to finish with "Hitchcock" types of twists and turns. It will test both your reason and your perception of reality. Don't read it alone...at night...in the dark!

Bill scanned the formidable darkness for signs of shifting ghosts, flimsy beings that prowl the thin line of reason, the place where desire meets obsession, where reality and illusion collide. They hide there, on the periphery of sight, dark phantoms clothed in moth-eaten rags, racks of bones filled with lust and cruelty, their hunger sated only by madness and addiction.

The stars overhead flickered, their thin light wavering, their light extinguishing, a black curtain descending over the world as if the earth had been cut away from the fabric of the universe.

The steady drone of the diesel engine grew louder and clearer.

"Sir?"

"Shhh!"

There!

Bill squinted, straightening in his seat, positive that he had seen movement deep inside the fogbank. The demon perched on his shoulder howled with glee, taunting him and whispering doubts in his ear. He closed his mind to it.

The mists parted. A boat's metallic hull passed like a swift storm cloud in front of the flashing red warning buoy to the south-east. The trawler chugged sedately along with only a pair of weak running lights, one at the prow and one at the stern, marking its passing. Nets and equipment jingled on deck; block and tackle tip-tapped against a large steel drum.

Bill removed the small black briefcase from the hollow under his seat. He fussed with its thin metal clasp, his fingers trembling with excitement. He popped open the case and carefully slid the infra-red binoculars out of their velvet lining, adjusted the sights, and lifted the scope to his face.

The vessel in the distance looked like any other squalid trawler working the waters off the West Coast: unobtrusive, her flat, metal hull dirty and lifeless, sorrowfully rusted and tempered by age and neglect. 'Seafarer II' was painted on the bow in ragged black letters. Two large silhouettes stood sentinel on the Seafarer's stern, their bodies a diaphanous wave of green, red and white. He focused the glasses on the largest one and was glad that he had lots of back-up.