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Never Sharpen a Boomerang

by Roger McAuliffe

378 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #05-1620; ISBN 1-4120-6709-x; US$24.62, C$28.31, EUR20.22, £14.16

The shocking death of a CIA deputy director on a marlin fishing boat during a secret visit to Australia exposes an international conspiracy to split Australia into two countries.

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About the Book

About the Author

Excerpts

Catalogue Information

About the Book

Never Sharpen a Boomerang is a novel about an international conspiracy to split Australia into two separate countries, which involves powerful, highly placed people in America, Britain, Japan, and China.

For security reasons in the Asia Pacific region, America wants the conspiracy stopped at all costs.

During a secret visit to Australia, a Deputy Director of the American CIA is accidentally killed on a marlin fishing boat off the country's rugged north west coast. His death sparks a chain of events that threatens to cause military conflict between America and China on Australian soil.

Dan Holland, a journalist and former editor of TIME Australia magazine, has just resigned his position as chief media adviser to the Australian Prime Minister.

But despite leaving the media and politics behind him, Holland reluctantly becomes embroiled in the separatist conspiracy and all the dangers associated with it. Holland also has a brother who is a federal politician, who becomes an unwitting participant in the conspiracy.

The skullduggery and intrigue driving the book is made even more compelling by Holland's internal conflict between his desire to drop out of politics, his patriotic duty to help destroy the conspiracy, and his loyalty to his brother.

The book is set in a political climate where there is increasing public discontent with Australia's perceived lap-dog relationship with the USA. Many Australians believe their country is becoming little more than the 51st state of America. An equal number however, strongly believe that without America, Australia cannot ensure its future independence. For them, questioning Australia's alliance with America is like sharpening a boomerang.

Much of the novel's action takes place in the spectacular Kimberley wilderness of Australia's north west, and in the nearby historic pearling port of Broome.

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About the Author

Roger McAuliffe is a freelance journalist and scriptwriter. In writing Never Sharpen a Boomerang, he has drawn on his bushcraft and survival training experience in Australia's Kimberley wilderness, and his years working in Canberra, the nation's political capital. He lives in Australia's Southern Highlands, between Sydney and Canberra, where he paints landscapes when he's not writing.

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Excerpts

Outside in the soft dusk light, the dingoes had been restlessly pacing their compound, close up against the front perimeter fence, for nearly an hour. And for at least half of that time, Sir Richard Dampier had been standing motionless at the window watching them. Although with its implication of awareness and observation, by his own strict definition, the word watching was inaccurate. Dampier may have been looking towards the agitated dingoes, but the conscious pictures in his mind were of his meeting a few days earlier with his nephew, which he was replaying over and over again. It was only when his lead dingo, Charlie, launched itself at the wire mesh fence with a howl, that Dampier's thoughts returned to the present and reconnected to the actual images his eyes were taking in. Charlie's impetuous behaviour was uncharacteristic and it immediately alarmed Dampier. He was concerned that the dog would injure itself on the fence and he hurried outside to calm and reassure the animal.

Dampier's instinctive preoccupation with the welfare of his prized dingoes pushed aside any possible reasons for the dog's agitation and dulled his sensitivity to the warning bells ringing in vain at the back of his mind. He had just unlatched the gate to the dingo compound and was about to push it open when a loud, deep- throated growl from Charlie caused Dampier to freeze in his movements, and he remained motionless, his hand still on the gate latch. For a second, the thought rushed through Dampier's mind at the speed of a feral cat in flight, that Charlie was snarling at him. But then his eyes locked onto the baleful stare of the huge dog as it fixed its gaze on something or someone behind Dampier. He stood looking at Charlie for several seconds and the dingo actually glanced up at him before returning its obsessive attention to the menace behind its master. Instinctively, Dampier didn't panic or overreact, and his calm response probably saved his life, because it allowed him the presence of mind to imperceptibly push the compound gate open slightly, before he turned to face whatever danger threatened him from behind.

Dampier found himself staring into a sneering oriental face he didn't recognise. All he knew was that it was a Chinese face, but not one he recognised from the Chinese community in Broome. Then he saw the gun pointed at his stomach and his mind was suddenly racing to recall all the anti-firearm self-defence skills which had once been second nature to him. 'It is long overdue Sir Richard,' the assassin hissed at him. 'But now is the time for you to die.'

As the man slowly raised his gun, arm fully extended, to aim it at a point between Dampier's eyes, he failed to see Charlie nuzzle the gate open. With a savage speed and power that shocked the gunman, three of the dingoes were instantly on him. As he staggered backwards under the ferocious onslaught, he fell and struck his head on a low retaining rock wall, stunning himself momentarily, and jarring his gun from his hand. In the several chaotic seconds between the man going down and Dampier retrieving and firing the gun in the air to drive off the dingoes, Charlie had already ripped his throat out and Dampier knew as he shoved the last dog away that his would-be assassin was as good as dead, if the copious blood loss hadn't already claimed him. There was nothing he could do to save him, and he knelt on one knee fighting to keep the bile down as he listened to the stricken man's life gurgling out of him. Confused and bewildered by Dampier's shouting and the gunfire, the dingoes had scurried off to watch him from the cover of the thick bush surrounding the compound. Crouching there in the dust and dim light, Dampier lamented the violent death of the man who had come to kill him, the death of his own obsessive patriotism, and the death of a 20 year dream.

Dampier had no option but to tell his nephew about the gunman's death , and even as he was explaining it over the secure phone line they had set up for just such contingencies, he found it necessary to constantly persuade himself that his nephew knew nothing about the intruder's murderous visit. Even with all his blind passion for Britain and the monarchy, Dampier was still capable of seeing clearly the difference between loyalty and integrity, and he reminded himself that in the final analysis he had to be faithful to himself above all else. As he listened to his nephew's angry voice issuing instructions about what to do with the would-be assassin's body, the disgusting notion struck him that his nephew, his own flesh and blood, had personally sent the assassin to kill him. There and then he decided that if Dan Holland made the long journey to see him, he would tell him everything about the JUKA conspiracy, down to the last sinister detail.

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Catalogue Information

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