In the years since the events of The Odessa Connection, Isaac Menshive and Will McIntosh have settled into new and contrasting roles. Isaac, with his priorities firmly centred on his young and growing family in London, has taken a back seat in running the Menshive Trust, the vast and burdensome business enterprise he inherited. It is Will who oversees the trust’s day-to-day administration full-time alongside Isaac’s daughter Ruth, to whom he is becoming ever more attached.As part of their researches, Will and Ruth discover that Isaac’s father, a university professor in New York who died under mysterious circumstances, had been working on his own ambitious project, based in the North Tower of the World Trade Center before the attacks of September 11, 2001. They call in experts to examine the Professor’s papers, including those scattered over the city when the towers collapsed, in the hope of learning more about his intentions. At the same time, Isaac’s grasping ex-wife and her two daughters suddenly come back into his life. Is this more than coincidence? Could they perhaps be in league with the sinister figures who have been harassing Isaac over the last several years?The 9/11 Connection brings the story of Will and Isaac to a satisfying conclusion as it continues to develop the relationships between the familiar protagonists while introducing some highly colourful new characters. With the same flair for detail, psychological nuance and sophisticated geopolitical understanding as its predecessors, the novel displays an uncanny prescience about the current political situation in Eastern Europe.
2008: Almost three years have passed since the tumultuous events outlined in The Mendelssohn Connection, which thrust the unwilling Isaac Menshive into a position of global responsibility as the head of a fabulously wealthy family trust. Isaac now lives quietly, if luxuriously, in a dacha in the west of Russia with his new family: his young wife Sophie, heavily pregnant with their second child, and his infant son. While Isaac’s marital contentment has put paid to his former philandering ways, it is his old friend and most trusted adviser Will MacIntosh who finds himself emotionally unmoored — at exactly the moment when events conspire to put the immense burden of the trust squarely on his shoulders.
Still in danger from unknown forces that will stop at nothing to get their hands on the trust’s considerable assets, Will and his team continue to investigate its origins and the extraordinary fortune that it has accrued over the centuries. The team’s researches point them in the direction of the city of Odessa and the early 20th century, and the unexpected involvement of two men: the first a very familiar figure from Russian history; the second hailing from Will’s own backyard on Prince Edward Island…
Moving between Russia, the Ukraine, London and the Mediterranean, this second instalment of the trilogy that started with The Mendelssohn Connection finds our protagonists Will and Isaac tested as never before. Now that he has so much to lose, Isaac experiences the extremes of joy and despair, while Will, weighed down by ever more responsibility, finds his stolid self- assurance evaporating as he discovers betrayal lurking around every corner.
Berlin, 2005: Will MacIntosh – the Canadian protagonist of James Macnutt’s previous, acclaimed, novel On Five Dollars a Day – is now a seasoned lawyer of almost 40 years who has allowed himself a three-month sabbatical in Europe. He intends to indulge his abiding fascination with European history and culture, and perhaps even connect with his own family history. Will’s interests are viewed with bemusement by his travelling companion Isaac Menshive, an old university friend who now practises surgery in New York and who views the trip as a welcome excuse to let rip. However, when they learn that Isaac has become the beneficiary of a staggeringly wealthy trust, the two of them determine to discover its origins, all the while aware that they are being followed across Eastern Europe by shadowy figures whose motives they can only guess at...
Moving across Europe from Berlin to Moscow via Poland and Belarus, The Mendelssohn Connection – the first in a trilogy – combines the structure of a travelogue, centred on the ever-bantering odd couple of Will and Isaac, with an impressively researched thriller, which patiently and methodically reveals a constantly growing, web-like conspiracy that threatens to envelop them completely
Macnutt has done it! He has made the foray from his previous architectural, travel,
and cultural books into a work of unique fiction and has done it with great skill. The
Spectre of Stanhope Farm is written with imagination, creativity, and amazing insight and
attention to historical detail and research into the Scottish world and the place of the
diaspora. What an exciting way to explore the 1770s world of Prince Edward Island
through the character of Frank and the spectre of Stanhope. Sense of place, heritage,
genealogy, class, and mystery are woven together and exhibit a writer who has come of
age. Warmly recommended to Islanders and visitors to the Island and atl who are intrigued
by all things Scottish. I want to see that wall!
- Dr Jack Whytock, author and lecturer
In the summer of 1965, Will MacIntosh, a naive but highly inquisitive twenty-two-year-old from Canada, embarks on a life-changing excursion through Europe. Arriving there, he finds the trauma of the Second World War still fresh on every street and in every person's mind.
While his high-minded purpose is to investigate the political complexities of the region and envelop himself in its cultural treasures, Will finds himself drawn to more earthly pursuits — usually alcoholic, but occasionally amorous in nature. Amongst his many adventures, Will is mysteriously spied on in Denmark, tries to discuss politics with some very polite Neo-Nazis in Lübeck, is menaced by East German guards at Checkpoint Charlie, inadvertently joins a deadly demonstration in Athens and is mistaken for the devil in Crete.
Tempering Will's youthful insights and enthusiasms with its author's more measured view of the world, On Five Dollars a Day is a vivid and engaging snapshot of one man's interactions with people and places all over Europe. It provides a fascinating record of the continent at a particularly critical moment in its history.
The story James Macnutt’s The 9/11 Connection is breathtaking in its scope and depth. This is a magnificent story and a worthy sequel to The Odessa Connection. I am impressed by the author’s abilit ........
By Pam BordenI bit into this book, the third of a trilogy imagined and written by James Macnutt, with the same interest I encountered earlier with The Mendelssohn Connection and The Odessa Connecti ........
The Mendelssohn Connection by James W. Macnutt published by Austin Macauley is a fun mystery thriller set in Central Europe and New York ca 2006. The novel begins with a short-scheduled trip to Eur ........
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