Firewater

About the Book

Firewater: Travelling with Terror chronicles the misadventures of mismatched twin brothers. In the mid 1980s, retired Canadian military aviators, Ned and Liam Kelly, form a company with the object of buying a yacht in Britain to take advantage of a favourable exchange rate. They hope to sail it to the Aegean, then return the boat to Canada for resale at a profit.
Ned, the narrator, is an introspective bachelor with low self-esteem. He is much smaller than his aggressive brother Liam, who has more than enough self-assurance for both. At the outset of his quest to purchase a boat in Southampton, Ned comes into rude contact with Sean McManus, leader of a band of IRA terrorists. Soon afterward, a misstep causes Ned to be run down by a motorcycle carrying Violet, an enigmatic young woman who works for MI6. Later, Ned unknowingly boards a bus together with a pair of IRA terrorists fleeing an apprehended bomb attack on the royal family. When a mafioso is murdered near his hotel, Ned comes under suspicion by Detective Superintendent Richard Buttsnyffe, the sycophantic underling of Alfred Ramsbottom, head of an ultra-secret antiterrorist branch of Scotland Yard.
In a tangled plot involving corrupt policemen, bungling secret agents, stolen nuclear weapons, and mafiosi, the Kellys blunder into dangerous waters with their newly purchased catamaran. As the book ends, in the heart of Paris, Ned is falling into a tormented dream after seeing a plaque commemorating the execution of Jacques de Molay, head of the Templars.

About the Author

The youngest son in a family of three boys and two girls, Dan Farrell was born in Ottawa, in 1927. His father Francis, a lowly paid, hard working civil servant had to struggle to provide for his family in those harsh years of the Great Depression. The family moved frequently - nine times during eighteen years. During the war, too young to enlist, Dan worked at a military proving ground during summer holidays. On graduating from Ottawa's Lisgar Collegiate, he volunteered for the RCAF at age eighteen in the final year of the war. His older brothers were already aviators.
Following a year in the RCAF, during which he qualified as a radio and radar technician, Dan went, on a scholarship, to Royal Roads Military College in Victoria BC in 1947. After graduation, he qualified as an RCAF radio officer. In 1950, F/O Farrell flew briefly on photographic survey missions with 413(T) Squadron from Rockcliffe airport. Six weeks later, he was posted to 426 (T) Squadron for service during the Korean war. Some years later he retrained and flew as a navigator in All Weather Fighters during the Cold War. After a twenty-seven-year career Dan left the air force to complete a degree in Spanish from Carleton University. He speaks passable French also. Dan is a qualified airplane and glider pilot, sailor, scuba diver, keen skier, and all round outdoorsman. In company with a friend, he sailed his catamaran across the Atlantic, then single-handed up the waterways to Lake Champlain.