‘You’d like me to vet some people, look behind their masks?’
‘In a way. You see, there’s a group of staff, my principal private secretary and others, who’ve been so close to me that they’re half-jokingly referred to as the Praetorian Guard. There haven’t been that many new faces and yet things have started to go askew – leaked memos, mysterious goings on which I’ve already mentioned. I’ve no way, myself, of discovering what’s happening and I can’t rely on internal scrutiny, for the simple reason that it could be them at fault. It needs an outside man and yet one of us at the same time, someone with foreign experience in security and some knowledge of government departments.’
The Story
This is a long saga in three parts, motif being ordinary people, in no way superheroes, nor rabbits … they just find themselves drawn into someone else’s game, they just wish to be left alone but once the atrocities begin, it’s clearly time to flee.
The average human rebels, faced with that sort of thing, strangers out of nowhere show sympathy, offer protection and assistance and slowly the little band hardens into a small, intelligent force which can hit back and seriously incommode the agenda.
That’s the storyline but it’s also about personal betrayal at all levels, about that grim optimism when all around seems more and more bleak. It’s also about the masks everyone wears and how to see behind them.
The characters
They’re all based on real people at least in part, in many cases down to real life dialogue or at least in that idiom. Some characters were not only left with their real names but real life scenes were just coopted – making it a semi-fictional series of tales.
The Jensen character was clearly the author in Chapters 1-4 but less and less after that.
Genre
Who knows? Romantic erotic mystery action suspense thriller, with dead bodies everywhere? The occasional raunchier parts have been called ‘intellectual eroticism’ and the final denouement strays into eschatology.
Also, it’s more a series of linked episodes than a single story, a saga in which the characters grow, change, die, written over two decades. It’s Das Buch.
Timeframe
The first write-up of notes was in 2000, part 2 was 2006, part 3 started 2007.
Some administrative notes
Masquerade is designed to be read vertically on an iPad or similar, each chapter navigating to the next. No iPad? Feel free to transfer text to a medium in which you can read it.
To avoid copyright issues, the pictures/sketches in this online version are NOT for commercial use, they only exist to give readers a rough idea.
Masquerade 