The Mission - Richard Joyce - Bog

About The Book
It's September 1966 and Adam has taken a teaching job in Western Canada, still licking his amorous wounds after his break-up with Mary and vowing to hunt down the killer of his friend, Bill Jackson. Tessa Bellman (former student) meanwhile has decided to stay on in London for another year.

What lay behind the conspiracy of silence at Hillcrest that had sought successfully to get rid of Bill? Adam wrestles now with this, and other questions. The \Who and Why continued to elude him. Was Bill's strange illness even due to paranoia, as was thought at the time? Or was it something more sinister? Adam, after a year in Canada, goes in search of answers, but, like his literary counterpart, Hamlet, he hesitates, unsure where and how to begin. He has only his vivid nightly visions, and that final, desperate letter of Bill's to go on. He lingers on in Canada until in April '67, he receives an unexpected letter from former student, Mack Hebler....

This, the second book of the Trilogy describes Adam Riley's desperate quest to avenge his former friend and colleague, but, as he enlists the help of some of his former students, a dangerous sense of nostalgia and inevitability seems to hang over them. Can they ever rid themselves of the Hillcrest inheritance, and of the 'Play'?

About The Author
The author was educated at a boarding school in rural England and obtained an M.A in Modern Languages from Cambridge. For a number of years, he worked in London as a freelance teacher, journalist and broadcaster. He has travelled widely, teaching in Germany, Canada and the United States, as well as his native England. In 1963, he took a teaching assignment in Texas, where he obtained much of the background for this allegorical, epic novel of vigorous youth, fierce endeavor, and gentle experience. He currently writes and teaches in England's West Country.

'All the world's a stage...'