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Mute
FINN O’BRIEN is twenty-eight years old and a worker in a paper mill in Buffalo, N.Y. It’s a dead-end job and all he and his wife JUDI can do is dream. Dream of their life in the Caribbean when they win the EMPIRE lottery. FINN has the strategy all worked out - for selecting the numbers and handling the win afterwards.
Then the dream starts to come true. Their ticket draws the biggest jackpot of all three quarters of a billion dollars. Finn is determined to conceal their identities. He wants respect, not to be sneered at as a ‘Mr Get Rich Quick’. Absolute secrecy, he is adamant. And this is where he makes his big mistake.
Because EMPIRE is a lottery with a difference. It’s run by a criminal syndicate and the syndicate has experience of people like FINN. They call them MUTES. They hunt them down, recover the winning ticket and kill them.
One person at EMPIRE is on FINN’s side, SHEILA POWERS, the claims assistant who takes his calls. But will she risk her life to help him?
And if FINN does bring down EMPIRE, what are his chances of getting his winnings?
Then the dream starts to come true. Their ticket draws the biggest jackpot of all three quarters of a billion dollars. Finn is determined to conceal their identities. He wants respect, not to be sneered at as a ‘Mr Get Rich Quick’. Absolute secrecy, he is adamant. And this is where he makes his big mistake.
Because EMPIRE is a lottery with a difference. It’s run by a criminal syndicate and the syndicate has experience of people like FINN. They call them MUTES. They hunt them down, recover the winning ticket and kill them.
One person at EMPIRE is on FINN’s side, SHEILA POWERS, the claims assistant who takes his calls. But will she risk her life to help him?
And if FINN does bring down EMPIRE, what are his chances of getting his winnings?
ebook
First published January 10, 2012
2 people want to read
About the author
Richard Doyle
9 books10 followersI'm a fiction writer trying to break away from typecasting. For a while I was focusing on disasters, books like Flood and Volcano - London threatened by a storm surge, an eruption-caused tsunami devastating the coast of Maine.
I could have gone on with the theme - publishers always want more of the same and Flood had made it into a movie - bit I couldn't face it. So I'm back to straight thrillers with MUTE, out now on amazon kindle. It's about a little guy taking on the big ones. Nothing earth shattering, just a simple story of a fellow who doesn't give up when threatened.
A bit about me. I'm a Brit who's spent most of his life elsewhere. I was raised in North Africa and Kuwait and I've lived in lots of countries since - USA, France, Ireland, West Indies and the UK. Hard to say which was the most fun. I married a girl who likes travelling and she's usually planning where to go next. Any suggestions welcome. We love sailing and our son is a yachtsman so a bit of water would be good.
If any of you decide to stray on to my amazon kindle entry, you'll see I've put Imperial 109 out there too. It's a novel I wrote in 1978 about a flying boat service between South Africa and America. It sold a million copies.
I could have gone on with the theme - publishers always want more of the same and Flood had made it into a movie - bit I couldn't face it. So I'm back to straight thrillers with MUTE, out now on amazon kindle. It's about a little guy taking on the big ones. Nothing earth shattering, just a simple story of a fellow who doesn't give up when threatened.
A bit about me. I'm a Brit who's spent most of his life elsewhere. I was raised in North Africa and Kuwait and I've lived in lots of countries since - USA, France, Ireland, West Indies and the UK. Hard to say which was the most fun. I married a girl who likes travelling and she's usually planning where to go next. Any suggestions welcome. We love sailing and our son is a yachtsman so a bit of water would be good.
If any of you decide to stray on to my amazon kindle entry, you'll see I've put Imperial 109 out there too. It's a novel I wrote in 1978 about a flying boat service between South Africa and America. It sold a million copies.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 9, 2021
Great book and a riveting read, a real page turner !
May 14, 2022
One of the best books I have read in a long time, edge of your seat story telling, and never knowing the outcome until the last page, a must read.
February 8, 2014
What can happen if you tick the 'No Publicity' box on your Lotto ticket!
Quite an entertaining read that turned into a real page-turner towards the end.
Quite an entertaining read that turned into a real page-turner towards the end.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews