Just in Time. The New Thriller: from Harry Buckle
85% of everything we need to work, live, eat, and survive travels in 'Just in Time' shipping containers. Even if we are lucky enough to live on locally produced food stuffs the machinery used to plant, harvest, process, store and deliver, or for us to cook such items will be relying on imported - and 'Just in Time' shipped parts. As do our water supplies, our offices, factories, hospitals, transportation and communications.
Cut off or interrupt the supply and it's like turning off the life support system of a nation.The reality or just the rumour, of empty shelves in urban food shops, has several times in recent years produced instant break downs of local law and order in the UK, Europe and the US,
The vineyards of South Western France, bordering the calm charms of the Canal du Midi, with it's old stone villages and canal side cafes basking in the warm sun, provide a deceptive start to this thriller. As we trace the increasingly urgent steps needed to prevent a series of events, that could seriously disrupt the world of 'Just in Time' shipping on which the modern world totally relies.
Gatering a pace, but with some degree of laconic humour, it rapidly takes us from the traditional intrigues of Shanghai and Singapore, via a barbecue cooked by The President of the United States, to a picturesque old town on the river Rhine, and on to the lawless badlands of Western Sahara, just South of Morocco.
Author Harry Buckle says: 'I try to write enjoyable and I hope thrilling fiction which doesn't require the reader to be tuned into computer generated effects or have any dark and threatening recesses of their mind disturbed.
'Having said that, despite I hope, this novel, being an exciting easy read, the reality is, any threat to our total reliance on 'Just in Time' for all that we need for the comfortable and safe life we are mostly used to, is a much needed and realistic wake up call.'
