Paul Werner

The Ballad of the Yarmouth Six Paul Werner

Laura Forster´s doing it again. The third volume follows her, with some anticipation, to the Channel Islands, in the Bay of St. Malo. Here, she is busy unveiling a dark secret ultimately harking back to the German occupation during WW II. The focus of her investigations lies on the history of the legendary Yarmouth Six: a jolly band of six young expendables recruited from a notorious "juvie". Under the leadership of an inexperienced lieutenant straight from Sandhurst, they are to mount a "pinprick" commando raid on the heavily mined little island of Sark. A suicide mission, obviously, that soon runs into heavy waters and comes very close to a fubar end. One of the recruits drowns; others sustain gunshot wounds. When, finally, it´s each man for himself, the generalized confusion gives rise to a fair number of dreadful, shocking, but also rather hilarious episodes, laughter being deadlier than bullets. Once the war is over, the six survivors, who had narrowly failed to become the terror of the Nazis, decide henceforth to take better care of Number One by founding a brotherhood of crime, which, in turn, is to become the terror of the British Isles. All of that is a lot of water under the bridge. Or is it? A long and bloody trail appears to be leading from the six graves to a mysterious present-day murder spree. When, in the course of his vendetta, the killer shoots a certain Solveig by way of collateral, he´s made a bad mistake. Young Solveig happened to be the first great love-affair of Laura Forster´s adoptive son, Ignace. And God knows, the Forster family is not in the habit of taking such things lying down...