A Propitious Place to Die

By David Boggis

When Ned Beame was 13, his American mother shot herself. Bipolar disorder. Two years on, Ned’s recklessness, driven by guilt, has moved beyond the drugs party scene into a programme of over-achievement, competing, consciously or not, with his billionaire industrialist Brit father.

That’s the task Australian Simon Shearer has to size up when he takes a summer job as Ned’s bodyguard (BG). Shearer is an ex-SAS Iraq-Afghan veteran with an acute moral conscience.

Sparks fly between BG and principal when, first, Ned vanishes from a barbie to do his own thing with an older woman – Dr Sujatha Mackay, Scottish father, Indian mother, expert microbiology researcher – and, second, when Ned gives Su a flight in his dad’s light aircraft, even though he is under-age and illegal.

But Su wants Ned’s dad’s company secrets to benefit the Third World, starting with India. Soon Ned is too in love to resist Su’s plot, and agrees to help her steal secrets. Then two things go wrong.

One: Shearer gets framed for murder and ends up in a French police cell. Ned no longer has a BG.

Two: A shadowy US outfit called IET moves in, and, after a shoot-out that leaves a man dead, Ned vanishes – with Su. Shearer, released from custody, has the job of finding out where Ned has gone and whether he went there willingly.

IET seize Ned in Varanasi, India (where Su has just been killed) and use him as pawn to steal the microbiology secrets. Ned ends up imprisoned in remote Nevada.

But Shearer, using his myriad contacts, tracks IET from the opposite end. He contacts a US Senator linked with IET who is sufficiently unhappy with IET’s taking a hostage as to lend Shearer his jet to reach the base in Nevada.

A bloodbath in Nevada leaves both the jet crew dead. But Ned, rescued, can handle the easy-to-fly Citation jet. They take off, Ned flying, Shearer navigating…only to end up in a monster thunderhead.

Against the odds, Ned gets them out again in one piece. They fly to a facility of Ned’s dad’s company, outside Tucson. But a killer is waiting, and Shearer gets shot, leaving Ned to run for it into a desert canyon – but armed. The killer follows Ned into the canyon.

Badly hit but still mobile, Shearer recovers enough to follow tracks into the canyon. But he is too far behind and the killer is closing on Ned.

Of all unexpected things, a tarantula on the trail proves pivotal in luring the killer inside pistol accuracy from where Ned now lies in wait. Ned takes out the killer. Fighting his bullet wound, Shearer joins Ned. Neither man can move further, and they both simply await rescue. Rescue duly arrives.

This may be the first ever bodyguard-and-principal thriller.  

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