Readers of Damn Fool can be the first to read the opening chapters of the new thriller from noted Mancunian author, Dan Reilly. While his prose style is often compared to the chart-topping writers of today, it is Reilly's plotting that really sets him apart. Where others are derivative, he is innovative and where other writers pack in half the action, Dan Reilly packs in double the action.

More chapters will be posted over the coming weeks, building up to the book's global launch on November 22nd. If you like what you see, be sure to let Dan know at reillydan@hotmail.co.uk.

The Secret Syndrome

By Dan Reilly

Chapter 1

It was the thick of night. Professor Strong watched the shadows creeping around him. They were dark.

Why has my lovely assistant, Janice Wolf, not called, the results were due moments ago, he thought heavily.

Pushing back his dark brown mane with one of his large hands, Professor Strong peered out of the window of his seafront New England manor house that he had inherited from his father who died in mysterious circumstances while mapping the Devil's Rock, a small island just off the coast of Malta, which is a small island once, and maybe still, inhabited by Templars.

The weather was dark.

A hailstone the size of a rock struck the window but Professor Strong didn't wince. He'd seen worse. And laughed in the face of it.

His Nobel Prize caught the light of the moon and gleamed brightly. He chuckled to himself. That old thing. He clasped his large hands behind his back. They were like granite, hard and solid.

If the people who respected my public work knew of my private endeavours they would be amazed and award me more than trinkets. He chuckled again, the sound booming in his broad chest. Professor Strong was not arrogant. He had saved the world twice.

A flash of lightning lit up the sky.

The phone rang and Strong grabbed the receiver in the dark, not needing to switch on the light to locate it because he knew the layout of the room well because it was his study and he was often there writing books or poring over ancient maps.

"Ms Wolf?" He said, expectantly, the slightest of tremors in his voice betraying the fact that he loved her above all else in the world except his work and the memory of his dead wife, who had died.

"No, you colossal fool. Ms Wolf is..." A pause during which Strong, swift-minded, began to trace the call using a device attached to his phone that he had attached to his phone for just such occasions. "Indisposed."

"What have you done to her, you black-hearted fiend!"

The call is coming from inside the house, Strong thought to himself, studying the triangulation of the signal. This house!

"Oh. You'll see soon enough. You'll soon see." A click.

Strong shook the phone angrily, as if throttling a man angrily.

The intruder must have been upstairs. He took a torch from his desk drawer but then decided he would rather use the element of surprise and put the torch back into his desk drawer and went upstairs silently, padding like a silent puma even though he was wearing dress shoes.

A light shone beneath his own bedroom door. He crept toward it, still as quiet as a feline, and placed his ear to it.

Nothing.

Strong stood and kicked open the door, his powerful legs reducing the sturdy oak to splinters.

Inside the room, Janice Wolf was tied to the bed, her body tatooed with strange runes. She was alive. But barely.

A dark shape, perhaps a figure in a black cloak, jumped out of a window laughing evilly. The window had already been open and must have been the point of entry.

There was no time to think about that though. Strong ran to Janice and untied her.

"What...happened?" She asked, her delicate features trembling softly.

Strong stroked her flaxen auburn hair and resisted the temptation to kiss her smooth white forehead. Her green eyes fluttered. Perhaps she wants to be kissed, he thought but shook the fantasy from his mind.

"Don't worry. Sleep now." He examined the runes before pulling the featherdown duvet over her fragile but brave form.

Nordic. Just like the symbol on father's dead face when they found him on that bleak rocky shore.

Strong walked down the stairs back down to the darkened study. Thoughts raced through his mind and jostled for position. What could this all mean?

He didn't know, but as he stared out the window at the angry sea, he knew that he would know soon enough.