TRUBLE

by Maurice Baker

Sixteen-year-old Jacob Lee Manning seems like a hopeless case to home tutor Andy Fish. Excluded from school for drug dealing, attacks on staff and pupils, vandalism, etc, and finally bringing down a suspended ceiling and hospitalising himself and other pupils, Jacob is also severely dyslexic and suffering from ADHD. However, Andy discovers the boy has a rare gift for technology but is alarmed by his ability to levitate objects among other subversive talents. Such stunts, and other even more spectacular ones, have been made possible by a special phone – nicknamed the Enzee - acquired by one of Jacob’s thieving friends. Unfortunately, many powerful people including gangsters and government agents find out about the device and make violent advances to get hold of it.Among Andy’s other students is Noraz, an unaccompanied fourteen-year-old found wandering the streets apparently suffering from amnesia and assumed to be an illegal immigrant. However, the boy is key to the mystery of the Enzee’s power – a meteorite discovered at the Antarctic by Yu Chang, a Korean scientist – though this is not revealed for some time.Meanwhile, Jacob fights off adversaries using the Enzee’s super functions which include time travel which is used to visit 1939s New York where he meets his hero Nikola Tesla and helps realise the inventor’s great ambition to produce free energy. Returning to the present day with a scale model of Tesla’s flying saucer design, Jacob enlists the help of Yu Chang and other friends to fly to the far side of the Moon where Noraz’s parents have been staying.Although the novel includes elements of sci-fi, it is rooted in believable situations with characters drawn from real life. There is also a subtle moral regarding the consequences of climate change if we do not act soon.

245 pages, Paperback

Published November 14, 2020