Cosmo Horrocks was over the moon. This was the juiciest story he'd had in years. In his job as an investigative journalist he spent his working days grubbing through the garbage bins of other people's lives (undeterred by the fact that his own wouldn't bear too much investigation), but this one seemed to have everything: religion - the man was a Catholic priest; sex - he was accused of impropriety with a teenage unmarried mother; money - he was thought to have channelled parish funds in her direction.
Valentine, a dying old man, makes his last confession to a friend, Thomas Lyon, mistaking him for a priest. Wild horses wouldn't drag from a priest the secrets of the confessional, but then film director Thomas is no priest. Should he tell what he knows from the confession?
Gunnlaug answers, "Neither Onund nor Thorfin are men as good as my father. Nay, thou thyself clearly fallest short of him--or what hast thou to set against his strife with Thorgrim the Priest, the son of Kiallak, and his sons, at Thorsness Thing, where he carried all that was in debate?"
Added by: Kahena | Karma: 11524.33 | Fiction literature | 10 November 2010
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A Prayer for the Dying
The story is about Martin Fallon, an ex-IRA executioner, who has bailed out on the movement after an tragic miscalculation caused a bus-load of school children to be blown up. We find him in London trying to leave the country and being chased by both his old comrades and Scotland Yard. He is blackmailed into killing one crime boss by another, and is seen by a priest Father De Costa. The story takes Fallon from executionor to hero as he is forced to protect the life of the priest at all costs.
