cover:
'Can you hear me, bitch? We're coming to get you...'

It was only a one-teacher school in the little town of Sunny Flat. It was a quiet morning until the four masked men arrived in the playground. The nightmare had begun. Sally Jones and her pupils were the victims of a kidnap raid that became an ordeal of terror. As escape became an obsession, they discovered the sadistic brutality behind the kidnappers' masked and the desperate violence that lay within themselves...

When Sally Jones woke up on the eighth of May she knew at once that something unpleasant lay ahead of her. Then she remembered. The Inspector was making an unexpected visit to her one-teacher school in Sunny Flat the next day and Sally wasn't ready. Her programme was unfinished and the classroom was a mess. And to add to all that, Sally feared that she may be pregnant. For the hundredth time she asked herself what she was doing in this dump three hundred miles from Sydney.

At school the morning began well enough. The children were cooperative and eager to help in the preparation for the Inspector. Without warning their peace was shattered by the appearance at the window of a grotesquely masked figure. It was the start of a 48-hour ordeal of terror for Sally Jones and her small band of pupils, kidnapped by a gang of sinister and sadistic men asking a cool one million dollars' ransom for their victims.

Sally's first concern was to protect and comfort the children, to share what little food and clothing they had, to keep them from breaking down altogether, but as their dreadful nightmare continued she determined to escape and then, together with the children, destroy.

Fortress, with its theme of the violence that lies beneath innocence, the beast that is in the heart of all of us, will inevitably invite comparison with William Golding's Lord of the Flies but Garielle Lord's novel is very much her own. Her taut and laconic story sustains suspense in classic thriller style until the final horrific climax.

I've just read this again after many years & it hasn't lost its impact. In fact, I think it had a greater, spine-chilling impact on me now - & it certainly stirred my thirst for vengeance. Although most of us stick to the conventions of society, we are none of us that far from savagery. The ending is quite chilling but very satisfying.


For the 2015 Australian Women Writers Challenge.

A stowaway...

a stowaway you say... well thin enough to sneak its way into all kinds of spaces...

thanks catsalive for reminding me to check out gabrielle lord's more recent books - i have read this one years ago and all of her earlier books (until about 10 years ago) but wil reread this one on some not so spooky night...

thanks

stowing away again - an older gabrielle lord to remind you of her writing style and evolution

happy reading
;)

Look what I received in the post today. Thank you

While I started with the best of intentions, I've come to the realisation that I will not be able to read every book that crosses my path.

So, I released this book in the beer garden yesterday while visiting.

Happy reading.