Spatel: The Silent Assassin

by Raymond Leonard

The date is the near future, where ten lucky guests are personally invited to help celebrate the opening weekend of the world's first Space Hotel, SPATEL. The guests themselves are as interesting as SPATEL itself. The world's leading brain transplant surgeon, who himself is enjoying his brand new body. A leading astronaut, and a wealthy couple who are there to plunder SPATEL's rich secrets. Then the bizarre, futuristic murders start, which somehow seem linked to the planets in the rooms which each guest has been allocated. With SPATEL refusing all contact with Earth for the weekend, the race is on to identify the true killer. Or is everything a costly illusion, devised by the elusive and mysterious owner, Mr. Howarth?

252 pages, Paperback

First published November 28, 2010

About the author

Raymond Leonard: Scientist, Novelist, Poet or Latter-day Prophet

Raymond Leonard was born during an air-raid on the centre of Manchester, in which his parent’s home was destroyed. As a youth, in the City slums, he devised many ways of helping the family budget, including a Newspaper boy, and running a Fruit and Vegetable stall on bombed land. Having left school at 14, he went on to win a State Scholarship and then a Ph.D. After a Senior Industrial Career he joined the Academic Staff at Manchester University. Here he founded his own department of Total Technology, which helped win the Queen’s Anniversary Prize, presented at Buckingham Palace. During his academic career he supervised numerous doctoral students, wrote over 200 research papers in science and engineering, and a textbook on Applied Technology. He also co-authored the book, How to Avoid The British Disease, which the then Prime minster, Margret Thatcher, referred to as being her Little Bible.

Lifelong passions for Professor Leonard have been Science, Religion and The Future. These interests inspired a series of futuristic novels. When the Daily Express was reviewing The Nostradamus Inheritance it carried the headline, Scientist Predicts The Day The World Will End. This caused widespread concern in the UK. The headline also helped the book hit the best seller lists, and even find translation into Japanese and Hindi. This public concern for the future was heightened when Professor Leonard’s own predictions in The Nostradamus Inheritance started to be chillingly fulfilled. Other predictions in subsequent novels, such as the immediate collapse of the Soviet Union, as forecast in Legacy of The Shroud, now titled The Jesus Clone, added to his growing reputation as a Latter-day Prophet. This prophetic image resulted in Professor Leonard giving the Cardinal Newman Lecture at Oxford University. Here the title was Reconciling Prophesy With Freewill. It was noted that the Old Library was filled to capacity for Professor Leonard’s presentation.

All Raymond Leonard’s five novels, suitably reviewed by the author, are now available on Amazon/Kindle. There is also an Amazon edition of the complete collection of his poems (published or otherwise). A selection of these poems is freely available for reading on his website, www.rayondleonard.com. The poems, entitled, Pearls Along The Path, bridge the wrongly perceived divide between Science and Faith. They also give a vision of the world that awaits ourselves and our fragile Earth.

Reviews

[Tony Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting premise, but not a unique one, as it's something you'll have read/seen in many films/books before. However, setting the novel in space was a nice twist.

Unfortunately, the novel was poorly written, especially the dialogue. It felt as though the conversation between characters was the first draft of a cheesy film script and really detracted from the story.

Free on Amazon kindle at the moment, but I'm glad I didn't pay for it.

[✿Claire✿ · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting, futuristic take on Agatha Christie's And then there were none. Although I didn't like it as much as the original (nothing is going to beat that!) it was a riveting read and I found myself intrigued as to when and how the next death would occur.
And there was definitely a twist in the tail when you discover whodunnit.