...Summary

Orange Sound ... the direct translation into English from an obscure Burmese dialect of the name of a hallucinogenic drug with some extraordinary properties.

Orange Sound may also be the unseen hand behind some extraordinary events taking place in the Northumbrian village of Wet Rain Hill; a place with a very interesting past stretching far back into prehistory. Samuel Brock, weekend-visitor to the village and professor of archaeology, is intrigued by what he has discovered and believes his research is leading somewhere significant.

Jack Hume and his Thai wife, Nok, are beginning a new life in the village; their household belongings shipped in from Thailand include some rather curious wooden animal carvings. There may, however, be more to these wooden ornaments than meets the eye.

A secretive Thai-speaking Englishman, another newcomer to the village, has been seen snooping around the Humes’ cottage. Could he be responsible for the break-in at their cottage, or is something far stranger and far more profound than anyone could possibly imagine unfolding in the village? An indication of this is given one blustery November evening when David Crawford catches sight of something strange on a hillside near the village.

Meanwhile, David Crawford's father, Detective Sergeant Alan Crawford, is confronted with the brutal murder of a young woman in a nearby city, the discovery of smuggled hallucinogenic drugs, not to mention a growing list of killings and inexplicable disappearances in the village.

The director of the Lucky Bird Export Company of Bangkok, Somchai Tantaratana, has had Wet Rain Hill on his mind for some time, and has plans to travel halfway around the world to visit the village. He is a man with an interesting business-line, an even number of wives and some odd superstitions.

The local vicar, Geoffrey Adams, is also a man with some firmly-held beliefs. And he is delighted when the legendary long-lost bell, missing from the village church since the English Civil War in the seventeenth century, is re-discovered. But he is then horrified to discover a staged crucifixion in the church graveyard; and what leads on from this discovery has profound consequences for his religious beliefs.

For a select few, there is the growing realization of a strange connection between the events taking place around the village of Wet Rain Hill. What unfolds is a drama informed by transcendent coincidences, Old Testament imagery, reptilian evolution, hallucinogenic experiences, and cross-cultural bewilderment; all of which leads to a remarkable and unexpected conclusion.

Orange Sound … a strange but beautiful collision of words;
a strange and terrible collision of worlds.

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All material © C. G. Black (2003)




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