Herbert Howard Jones

Toxic Promises (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

When Gerald Raphemore's beautiful high school girlfriend Florence got pregnant he knew that his life would be over unless he did the proper thing and marry her. He sort of loved her but considered himself too young to be taking that walk down the aisle. His girlfriend Florence was fun and easy when it came to the bedroom, but she came with a serious catch. If she got pregnant, Gerald would have to marry her or incur the wrath of her rich Uncle Damien.
Keeping a pregnancy secret was a non-starter, but Gerald did not want to be subservient to a powerful businessman like her uncle. If Gerald married Florence he would lose his independence and probably end up working for her exploitative family. Perhaps forever. Gerald had a vision of working for a New York firm but Uncle Damien would close all doors to his escape. Gerald would be compelled to work for Uncle Damien's established provincial company out in the sticks. His prospects boring and bleak. Gerald's appetite for freedom and young women would be curtailed and he would be stuck with Florence for the rest of his life.
This was not how he saw his life panning out. Of course if he could just persuade Florence not to have the baby then life could go on as normal and he would eventually be able to dump her. But when Gerald persuaded her to take steps to abort the baby, things backfired, and she dug her heels in and declared that she was going to have his child. After all, they loved each other, and she was confident he was the man for her.
In view of this setback, Gerald found himself contemplating other options. Perhaps in his desperation he went a little crazy, maddened like a creature caught in a trap. It seemed to him that if Florence was off the scene altogether then he would be a free man again, able to concentrate on what he really wanted to achieve in life. It certainly wasn't marriage, not now. Also his love for Florence vacillated almost from day to day. Some days he thought she was stupid and spoiled and on others, one of the best lookers in high school a catch. And she was a catch because she was the beneficiary of a huge allowance and then later a generous Will. If he married her, they would be rich, and life would be a fine thing except that he would have to work for her tyrannical uncle.
To Gerald this would be unbearable and come with many drawbacks, loss of freedom, loss of control over his own destiny to name but a few. He just didn't want to be under this man's thumb. Gerald would be almost like a sacrificial lamb, there to satisfy Florence's dreams of a perfect domestic life. But Gerald's brain screamed no! If Florence insisted on having her baby, then Uncle Damien would make things very hard for Gerald indeed. He had the power as an influential businessman to ruin his life. In 1950's America having a baby out of wedlock created a huge stigma for the mother and placed a burden on the father. So Gerald was well and truly trapped. He would have to do something truly desperate to get off the hook, something unthinkable before there was no turning back. And to him, murder was the only answer, but done cleverly enough so that no one would ever guess.
And while Gerald was plotting and planning, behind the scenes Florence was playing him like a chump. In fact, she had her own agenda as she herself felt trapped by family circumstances. In Gerald she had seen a way out, a way that she herself could get off the hook and bring her own destiny forward. Their mutual enemy was Uncle Damien and one way or the other someone would benefit from his removal. But the question was who hated her tyrannical uncle most, Florence or Gerald? And who in the end was the more ruthless of the two?
In a way it was serious test for Gerald, but would he fail it? One thing was for certain, someone was in for a terrible shock!

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Herbert Howard Jones
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. Februar 2022
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781005827380
• Artikelnr.: 72408420

Autorenporträt

HERBERT HOWARD JONES grew up in Notting Hill, London in the sixties. He went to a boarding school in Norfolk and then local schools including Sloane School where crime writer John Creasy attended near the King's Road. When he left school he got numerous jobs, including as a porter at the BBC London, working as a jewellery assembler in a factory in Hatton Garden and also in a number of roles at a showbiz solicitor's office where he was a trainee legal executive and ran errands for a few of the British movie and music names of the time.

He is a creative spirit who also likes dabbling in music and art himself. When he was in the jewellery business he personally made over ten thousand 14 carat gold gate bracelets which was a great learning experience for him. However, he was more interested in media and always wanted to write suspense books with a melodramatic element and so spent years reading them and working on various projects. He is also interested in romantic and fantasy fiction. And despite being a Catholic he is interested in New Age literature, mythology and metaphysics.

But meeting people has always inspired him the most and he has had the good fortune to meet quite a few interesting people. He was personally friends with horror writer, Denis Wheatley's housekeeper when she lived in Blackheath, and knew poet John Pudney who lived nearby before he passed. One of the most interesting people that he met was the daughter of the Captain of the Titanic with whom he had tea in her cottage up in Suffolk. Miss Smith was a lady with a big personality and a very interesting home. She was surrounded with Titanic memorabilia wherever you looked. Jones was only a boy at the time and didn't appreciate the significance of all this stuff, but regrets not quizzing her on the catastrophic event which has forever featured large in shipping folklore!

PERSONAL MESSAGE:

I WANT TO EXPRESS my gratitude to readers who have bothered to download my books. I put a lot of effort into them and also design my own covers, and so it is a wonderful reward to get a download. Every author on this platform will be grateful for them because writing can be a lonely and thankless task. It is only the reader who makes it all worth while, and so thanks very much again.
HHJ