Strange Meeting

Marcellian had seen death in all it shapes and sizes in most quarters of the globe. He was never shocked. But when he stood below the burning lights of the police mortuary and identified the face he remembered from his childhood, his life changed direction for ever. It was the start of a journey; a journey that would take him into a dark past; a journey that would show him the cruel ways of the world; a journey that would teach the true meaning of life. This is a tale of four people whose paths are drawn inextricably together as they follow their destinies through the violent years of World War II and the menacing Cold War years that followed. The narrative steers a course from the ivory towers of Cambridge to the battlefields of northern France; from the windswept deserts of north Africa to the frozen hillsides of German-occupied Norway; from the ruins of 1950s West Berlin to the dark world of the British intelligence services. And for two of them, Marcellian and Gabby, thrown together by the pain of their memories, there is at last peace, like a white light shining in the dark; a story of unexpected love, chiselled out of the granite of experience, simple but true. 'At the end of it all, what is there but the beauty of a blue sky on a summer's day and the love of another?'