Items related to For Your Pleasure & Questionable Behaviour
Synopsis
Poker machines?harmless amusement devices provided for your pleasure and relaxation in almost every pub and club across the country? It has been argued so. They can take your spare change, perhaps your wages. They could take your car or even your house. For John Edwards, however, the stakes quickly and unexpectedly became much higher!
Questionable Behaviour
When two small-time crooks reluctantly agree to work off their debt to Eddie (Nails) Madden?the local drug peddler and would-be crime boss of the area?they soon learn that things aren?t quite as they were led to believe. Morris is nobody?s fool, possessing a keen understanding of human nature and an inherent sense of natural justice. It will require a good deal of intelligence and a measure of cunning, too, if events are to be steered toward a favorable outcome. But then there?s his buddy, Spider.
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About the Author
Thomas James Taylor (not to be confused with other authors of similar name) was born and raised on Trushgrove Farm, South Australia.
Now sixty-five years of age, he turned to writing in the mid eighties as therapy in breaking from a destructive lifestyle, and quickly fell in love with the medium. Termed at the time, as manic depressive or bi polar, he says that harnessing the augmented mental activity of being bi polar and using it to drive stories was the answer to dealing with the situation, and now the condition is seen only as an asset, without need to use chemicals, prescribed or otherwise.
Years of searching, working jobs all across Australia in often harsh conditions became an endless journey. He studied science, music, quantum mechanics, motorcycle mechanics and story writing, and after a long time settled and married to live quietly close to both the ocean and unspoilt landscapes, South of Adelaide.
"Growing up with Nature on the doorstep imbued me with a powerful and abiding respect for all that nature provides; and being a shy child, I was given to observing live and human beings, never realizing that one day the talent would put me in perfect position, applying all I have absorbed of human beings throughout life becoming invaluable in the practice of the art of novel and short writing: a vocation I love."
From the Back Cover
For Your Pleasure & Questionable Behaviour
by Thomas James Taylor
Beacon Books & Xlibris AU
by Thomas James Taylor
Beacon Books & Xlibris AU
book review by Priscilla Estes
"It could mean that you don't have to strive in search of some great adventure all your life, when life, itself, being human, is already the great adventure."
In this book, one can enjoy two novels in one, each unrelated except for their mutual Australian setting. The first book is a tale of a close friendship between two men that is disguised as a gritty crime caper. Morris and Spider are tangled in a life of wrongdoing yet long to escape it. Lively descriptions of people and place animate a standard plot: the age-old quest for ill-gotten money and securement of drugs. The pawn-shop transaction featuring the "Right Honourable Sir Desmond Tutu" white leather lounge suite is especially spirited. What really shines are the sympathetic descriptions of Spider and Morris and their unusual, even humorous, reactions to their situation and each other. The inner workings of level-headed, kind Morris and his deceptively shallow sidekick, Spider, beg to be unfolded, perhaps in a well-crafted short story.The second book careens into the realm of science fiction via a descent on an escalator (literally) into the bowels of hell. The main character, John, is an unemployed failure with a wife and baby to feed. True to his habit of seeking something for nothing, John attempts to improve his finances by playing a mysterious slot machine visible only to him. The magic gaming machine drops John into absurdist scenarios that are a wicked cross between A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life. Imaginative quandaries (mazes, portals of illusion) create a physical manifestation of John's strengths and weaknesses. The gaming machine symbolizes man's free will to choose. Will this journey teach John to select correctly? The creative ending surprises.
Imaginative and creative scenes, dark humor, a gift for establishing character, and a solid sense of place imbue both books with an unusual perspective on the paradoxical strengths and weaknesses of the human condition. Morris, Spider, and John are men not soon to be forgotten.
From the Inside Flap
For Your Pleasure . . .
Although it was a bright August afternoon, his well-worn wind-cheater proved barely adequate against the unusual chill which had persisted since early morning. He moved languidly along the footpath, somewhat distracted and thoughtful, his whimsical disposition affected in the usual way by his surroundings: An impoverished neighbourhood where alike brick veneer houses crouched in quiet abjection against the hillside; varicoloured roof-tops blending into the distance in semblance of some dappled impressionistic townscape, every home representative of the others, merely a piece of the whole, dreary, picture-puzzle-like scene; yards overgrown and tangled, the odd few mown and neatly trimmed, yet every dwelling exhibiting some telling sign, the deterioration over recent years reflecting the general malaise which had gradually spread through the community, casting a cloud of uncertainty over all the valley.
Questionable Behaviour . . .
"Got a slight problem, boss," Lokki said.
Madden was undeterred. "Come on in," he encouraged. "The show's just getting started."
Morris halted Lokki two steps inside the kitchen. "I don't think I agree with what's happening here," he said.
"Just hold it with that, will you, Morris? Gloria has got something she wants to say, haven't you, dear heart. Go on, tell everyone what you just told me."
Gloria quieted her snivelling just long enough to repeat, "It was Miles' idea."
"He told you what to look for and you did the thieving?" Madden prompted.
"Yes."
Morris chipped in. "Then you ripped off Miles and tried to flee?"
"No. I was scared. Miles still had the bonds and he wasn't going to share. I figured that out. I was going to stay with a guy I met while I was on the game."
"So where's my fifty thousand now?" Madden demanded.
"I don't know, but to hell with your filthy lucre and to hell with you too. You know, you-really are a scum-bag, Eddie."
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