the devils walk : Synopsis
Warning : This synopsis is for Agents and Publishers.
Reading it will ruin the story!
In 2009 Edward Broome is 54. He is white, middle-class and privately educated. He is also gay and an alcoholic. As a High Court Judge he is blackmailed into dismissing a trial involving a Cabinet Minister. Shortly afterwards his body is discovered in his burnt out car.
But Broome is not dead. His blackmailers agree to fake his death on the understanding that he disappears. Independently wealthy, he re-emerges as James Dorrell in a quiet part of western Provence where he lives on his own for three years. One morning in February 2012, seeking shelter from a snowstorm, he walks to the Abbé de Sénanque where, over the course of the following days he tells his story to the Abbot, Father Ignace, by way of a confessional.
He tells of an idyllic early life in the rural Northamptonshire that is shattered at the age of 16 by the death of his mother. From this he begins to sink into an existential depression but emerges when he meets and falls in love with a boy at his school. Masquerading as friends, they spend a week at together in the holidays but the relationship is discovered by the boy’s father and is summarily ended. The twin shocks of the death of his mother and the loss of his love cause him to throws himself into his work as a result of which he wins a scholarship to Oxford.
At Oxford Dorrell begins the dual existence that continues the rest of his life. On the one had he is a bright scholar with an original mind and strong reputation for debate; on the other he suffers from a powerful attraction to young boys. However, here as with most of his life, he manages a dual existence with his proclivities as a dark secret.
Whilst at Oxford Dorrell meets the man who is a close to being the only real friend he ever has. Dwight D Hogg is a brilliant mathematician suffering from Asperger’s. Whilst Dorrell is energetic, outspoken and competitive, Hogg is reserved, mostly silent and, being bereft of any social skills, entirely private. Dorrell is drawn to Hogg because he is fascinated by a life apparently untroubled by people. Hogg is attracted to Dorrell by the love that Dorrell gives him and which he cannot get elsewhere.
Dorrell leaves Oxford with a First, is called to the Bar and begins work as a Barrister in 1978. The obvious choice for someone of his talents is to pursue a lucrative career as a commercial lawyer, however Dorrell eschews this in favour of a tenancy with a human rights set. Thus begins a 30 year career of appearing for the defenceless and the seemingly indefensible against a bullying legal system, an intolerant public and a hostile Press – the highlight of which is a highly unpopular defence of a ten year old child killer.
In 2009 he is blackmailed. A case has been brought which will severely compromise a Government Minister called Aaron Hampshire and it is arranged that Dorrell will hear it. But before the case comes to court, he is then confronted with a film of him having sex with a minor and is forced to dismiss the case. Once done he believes himself to be free from his obligations but is shocked to learn that the establishment cannot miss and opportunity to rid themselves of this ‘turbulent lawyer’ and he is forced into the fake that opens the book.
Drunk, bitter and lonely Dorrell lives in Provence daily contemplating the unfairness of a life in which his nemesis Hampshire thrives whilst his life is effectively over. His rage and frustration are only increased as he learns Hampshire’s full history from Hogg who is now working for the American Intelligence. Like Dorrell he has led parallel lives; one in which he is a war hero, a successful businessman and now a prominent MP – the other in which he is one of the world’s most ruthless arms dealers.
Where he once had been successful in separating the two sides of his life, he begins to slip into a kind of madness brought on as the light and the dark begin to collapse into each other. Finally unable to control himself, he rapes a child and, in the mania that follows he cuts off his penis. It is some months after this incident that he sets off on his walk that ends in the Abbey and his meeting with Father Ignace. As he tells the Abbot his story he begins to realise that it is his duty to balance his account with Hampshire and to expose the truth.
Learning that Hampshire’s granddaughter Kate is an investigative journalist, he invites her to Provence and, with the assistance of Hogg, he tells her grandfather’s story. It’s a gamble. Dorrell could have told any journalist but he cannot resist the idea that his nemesis is brought down by a member of his own family.
It appears to have failed and Kate leaves Provence furious with Dorrell for the trick that he has played. She returns to England and confronts her grandfather who convinces her that Dorrell is a fraud and receives a promise that she will not publish anything that she has been told. Hampshire then travels to Provence to murder Dorrell. Kate, meantime has been speaking to Hampshire’s brother, her uncle, and learns more details of her grandfather’s life which finally persuade her to publish.
His mission in Provence completed Hampshire returns to England as the story hits the newsstands.