SHY

by lyndon mallet

SHY. Synopsis. An adolescent schoolboy on holiday with his parents strikes up a friendship with an 88-year-old woman. The mutual attraction is undeniable, probably because they are both the wrong age for the party. Cy – Cyril Morrison – is awkward in grown-up company. Fraulein Schmidt – who lived through WW2 – has seen everything. She teases him by calling him ‘her little gigolo’. The phrase impresses Cy, who decides that a gigolo is exactly what he wants to be when he grows up – whatever that means. Disillusioned with school life, Cy runs away from home in search of his old lady, who lives hundreds of miles away in another country. As a missing person, he becomes the focus of a police search, but on the road he learns to look after himself, sleeping rough, stealing when necessary and relying on the protection of people he meets along the way. The story follows his adventures, the despair of his parents and the efforts of various agencies looking for him. In the three years he is on the run he takes a variety of casual jobs, absorbing a lesson from each new encounter. When he finally reaches Fraulein Schmidt, she is horrified at what he has done and insists he contact his parents. Cy now has to face the consequences of his actions, come to terms with the damage he has done to his own family and adjust to the reunion when they come to take him home. After a period of adjustment he enrolls on a journalism course at a local college. Full of extravagant stories about his travels, he finds his fellow students regard him as a cocky line-shooter. Confused by their rejection, he feels that three years of self-sufficiency must have given him insights they couldn’t match, until it’s pointed out to him that his experiences came at a price. Thus subdued, he is forced to recognize that self-interest is not the way to enlightenment.

238 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 17, 2020

About the author

Lyndon Mallet is a British novelist and cartoonist with film, TV and radio credits to his name. He started writing in his teens and became road manager of a flying circus in exchange for being taught to fly, before embarking on a career in advertising. His most well known literary creation is the Irish debt collector Mark Taffin. The first novel "Taffin" was published in 1980 and made into a movie starring Pierce Brosnan in 1988. He has written four Taffin novels. He was a staff writer on the famous British television crime drama The Bill from 1993 - 1998 and is credited for nine episodes.

Reviews

[Kathryn Mechling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well done Lyndon

I truly enjoyed reading another book by Lyndon Mallet. Enjoyed the visit back to adolescence. Will we here more about Cy in the future?