Night of the Parakeet

A child falls to his death. A tragic accident or something more sinister? Caught up in the mystery of his young brother's death, nine-year old Charlie turns detective. Boyhood games of investigation, fired by the visit of a police Inspector one winter's evening, lead him into an ever more disturbing labyrinth of discoveries. The shadow of suspicion falls upon his own respectable Victorian family, setting up reverberations that will haunt him in adult life. On the brink of manhood, still driven by a compulsion to find the truth, he joins his flamboyant, profiteer uncle in Brazil. From the heady excesses of rubber-boom town Manaus, to his uncle's decaying sugar plantation, he is exposed to the corrupt roots of his family's wealth, and balked at every turn in his underlying quest. It is only on his return to England that a disturbing new possibility emerges into the light . . .