by Trevor Timbs

Richard Strang is an ex-mercenary turned private investigator, operating South Coast Confidential. He's as ruthless as they come and always sees his cases through to the explosive end. In 1967, he led a small band of mercenaries into Bolivia to rescue 'Che Guevara. Thirty years later, a chance encounter with a blind man brings the memory of that period in his life flooding back with a vengeance. He held out a sinewy well manicured hand. 'By the way, my name is, Kyle. Sam Kyle.' After the brutal murder of Ray Kinsella, his life long comrade and fellow member of the team that sprung 'Che' Guevara from the grasp of the Bolivian Rangers, the 'old firm' reunite to avenge the murder of their friend and put to rest the nightmare ordeal they witnessed more than thirty years previously. 'For the past thirty years,' he said, and then hesitated before blurting. 'I've woke up every morning and danced around in a freezing cold shower just to prove to myself I'm still alive. We all died out there, Richie, but you know that don't you?' And for the next three decades the diary lay undiscovered, until Kinsella found it and rescued it from the bonfire. 'These are Che's last entries. I call it his unofficial field diary. The official one, the one everybody raves about is back in Cuba.' He opened it where several loose pages acted as a marker. 'This one's more personal, the loose leaves are pages torn from that German Calendar notebook he carried.' 'Twelve letters, eleven spaces, one word, Lallapaloosa. Spoken, it melts into nothingness like spun sugar. Whispered, it melts nothingness. And thirty years ago, there was plenty of that.