Invisible Enemy
A Short Story by James King
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Mystery & Suspense Literary Fiction
Click on the cover to view the book at Amazon
Suicide or Murder? – The Life of a Child hangs in the balance - The Verdict Uncertain
A psychological thriller – Short Story - that will change the way you look at humankind.
It’s 2021 and the world is paralysed by Covid-19. The invisible microscopic organism looks on, astonished at Man’s inability to solve his problems.
Despite the warnings and having all the resources available to do so, humans run in circles desperate to escape the clutches of an invisible enemy.
Commissaire Pascal de Gaulle is focused on other pressing matters, when a man falls to his death in the centre of Paris, carrying a secret.
De Gaulle discovers the Drug Squad, a syndicate of drug traffickers, and the virus itself are all part of the puzzle he must solve. Is it suicide or is it murder?
And how will he save his orphaned godchild from leukemia?
Do not read Invisible Enemy if you don’t like puzzles.
But if you are a Dan Brown fan or you like Paula Hawkins – The Girl on the Train - you will love this nail-biter.
JAMES KING SAYS:
This book is a puzzle with a number of possible outcomes. The conclusion you arrive at will depend on your relationship with the characters, your hopes and your problem solving capabilities.
With the world obsessed by the Covid-19 pandemic, I imagined how a microscopic organism we shared the planet with might view humans if it could. In quiet moments, I distanced myself from reality and took a helicopter view of the human species. It was some shock.
In between my night and daydreams, I had an idea for a short book. Then while I was researching, I stumbled across this story, which gave me the inspiration and impetus to write it.
The Paris Police Force was hit by a series of scandals from 2014 to 2017 and was rocked by the case of a thirty-six-year-old Paris Drug Squad officer. They sentenced Jonathan Guyot to ten years in prison in 2017 for stealing fifty kilogrammes of cocaine from a safe in the Paris Police headquarters.
Security guards saw Guyot entering the headquarters, known as 36 Quai des Orfevres, late at night in July 2014 when the drugs worth around two million euros went missing. They saw him carrying two bags.
A week later, the Police detained Guyot. He had twenty-four-thousand euros in cash on his person and the code of a safe saved in his mobile phone.
Guyot, who had been an officer in the Paris Drug Squad since 2010, denied responsibility for the theft and maintained his innocence.
But an investigating magistrate deemed his alibis “extravagant”. And the presiding judge in handing Jonathan Guyot the maximum sentence, said the prosecutor had proved him guilty "beyond a shadow of a doubt."
The drugs remained unaccounted for, but drug-dealer Farid Kharraki was convicted of selling the stolen cocaine and sentenced to five years in prison.