About The Secret Trust

Are you tired of reading novels about terrorists, dysfunctional families, dishonest officials and serial killers--the sort of stories we see every day in newspapers, magazines and on TV?  If you are, you will enjoy this book.

The Secret Trust is a mystery in the best British tradition without a messy murder for a famous detective to solve.  It's an intriguing tale of an American  lawyer's challenge to weave his way through a net of legal intricacies only the Brits could devise.  And as the lead male character observes, "It had to do with a woman, of course, but not in the way you might think."

For those who like their novels spiced with romance, there is enough in this book to satisfy everyone, from boyhood fantasy to an interlude featuring a sex goddess to the "real thing" with the kind of woman most men dream of but never get. The American lawyer, Lee Charles,  is surrounded by females of a dozen ages and descriptions from the day he is born until the time the last page is turned. How he views and relates to them is insightful and often hilarious. One thing is clear. He likes them all, but two are special. One is the love of his life. The other? She's his favorite client and devoted friend, an older woman, English to the bone, who, at her death, leaves him a mysterious puzzle to solve. Then the search for the secret is on.

From the first few pages until the last chapter, the reader meets a mélange of characters rarely seen in the novels of today.  A flamboyant legal assistant with unusual powers of persuasion, teenage athletes, a typical filthy rich Texas billionaire--with enough crudeness and business smarts to match any similar character ever created--but who is not as stereotypical as one would expect. When the tale takes the protagonist to England (as his British client's posthumous last wish commands him to do) British solicitors of all sorts appear to help their American counterpart make sense of the many documents and coincidences so mysterious as to baffle the brightest legal minds in both countries.  Even politicians of the United State government and those of the United Kingdom play roles in the subplots caused by legal devices long forgotten, but still vital and essential to solving the mystery. 

The author experiments with at least a dozen dialects, from the school boy playgrounds of America to the highest reaches of  British aristocracy.  All of the accents, the use of different idioms from America and England, as well as the shifting of expressions and common usage from one place to another are deftly woven into the text of the story with authenticity that rings true. The reader begins to understand how both the United States and Great Britain are important to the final solution to the mystery.

The history of both countries plays an important role throughout this novel and the careful reader will note a strong patriotic theme underlying the thoughts and actions of the American lawyer as well as the utmost respect for the British people and their traditions.

Is solving the puzzle worth the wait? It is if the reader likes a plot with two claims to a secret trust containing property worth a fortune.  And a dramatic trial is inevitable, perhaps  the "trial of the century" as one character in the book puts it.

The story has more twists and turns than a mountain road with the secret just out of reach until the last few chapters, as the author skillfully mixes in one surprise after another.  As for the ending, the reader will have fun trying to guess it.

Read an Excerpt from The Secret Trust.

Read more about the English legal system.