Fourteen

'Fourteen' is a chronicle of events which befall the Mannering Gang, a group of young people who were the main characters in 'Cardigan', a story about their adventures in 19452 when they were ten years old. It is now 1956 and they are fourteen years old and attending high school. They happy existence in Cardigan is overshadowed by the predations of a cruel, sadistic monster who attacks young girls. No one knows who the perpetrator is and the police are baffled. They have a profile of somebody who could be anybody. When the Mannering gang decide sto take a hand in the investigation they place one of their number in great danger in order to solve the mystery of the Cardigan predator.

Geoff Spedding is a New Zealand-born writer who lives in Rome, Italy. He has written novels set in Australia, where he lived for 30 years; Italy, to where he retired from paid employment and New Zealand, where he grew up in a small country town rather like ’Cardigan’ in which the novel of the same name and this book are set. Currently he is writing a novel set in the volcanic hills to the north of Rome and he is also planning a fourth book in the Erik Portland Trilogy which is about the Victorian High Country in south-eastern Australia. Being the fourth book, he believes the Erik Portland books will have to become a ’series’.