Bernard W. Rees

Having seen the world through the shipping business for many years, expat Bernard W. Rees has re-invented himself as a writer. We review his two thrillers, The Manila Galleon and The Last Patriot.

Expats have an advantage when writing fiction; doing unusual things in exotic places is often part of the experience of living and working outside your native country. Dutch resident Bernard W. Rees takes us to the Philippines in The Manila Galleon and to China, along the Silk Road and over the Himalayas into Pakistan in The Last Patriot.

A real page turner

Born in Llanelli in Wales, Rees has seen his fair share of the world. He grew up in Kampala, Uganda and Nairobi in Kenya. At sixteen he went to sea and got his first taste of the Orient. He emigrated to Canada in his early 20s where he traded ships and cargo for many years, from "the Americas to the Persian Gulf, China, Japan and Korea".

Following the death of his first wife in 1995, Rees decided he needed "to change my life and do something new". He sold his shipping business and moved to Manila, where, in his spare time, he searched for Spanish treasure ships.

This is when he developed another talent: he pens a good yarn. The main character of The Manila Galleon is Peter de Vries, a rogue CIA agent. Of course rogue CIA agents are common in thrillers these days, and one who has lost his memory isn't that original either. But what really matters is that Rees makes something of this character in this page-turning thriller, with a twist.

De Vries gets involved in the salvage of a 17th century Spanish treasure ship, while at the same time he must avoid the CIA and discover the significance of his dreams about the Galleon and its fatal encounter with Dutch privateers. The sole survivor was a Dutch prisoner, Captain Jeroen de Vries.

Rees wrote his second novel while living in the US from 2003 to 2005. The CIA is there again but this time the main setting is China. This book is heavier than Galleons as it deals with the "major problems facing the world today": energy security, terrorism and the looming potential of conflict between the US and China.

The hero, if that is the correct term, is Owen O' Brien, a cynical, alcoholic journalist and the heroine is an idealistic young doctor working with orphaned AIDS children in China.

Written as a memoir to his daughter, the book recounts how O'Brien comes into possession of secret documents outlining a plan to attack the US. The CIA, which will never hire Rees to do its PR, is again the bad guy as it joins forces with the Chinese to stop O'Brien fleeing with the papers.

If this was Hollywood, the hero would save the day at the last minute. But Rees, a world-wise expat, doesn't go for sugar-coated endings. Not to give too many secrets away, Reese wrote a second, 'Hollywood ending' for Galleons to "maintain the domestic peace" with his wife. The Last Patriot has a more open ending.

Reese opened yet another new chapter in his life when he moved to the Netherlands as the 'trailing spouse' at the beginning of 2006. The couple's teenage children enrolled in the international school in Arnhem and their youngest is attending Dutch elementary school.

This expat author is now working on a series of books about an American living in Paris. We will eagerly await publication.

Synopsis -‘The Black Madonna’

Author-Bernard W Rees.

Thriller- circa 350-400 pages.

Sean O’Brien, son of a Boston Irish father and a French Canadian mother, is a wounded veteran from Iraq, in an American military hospital in Germany. He is visited by his estranged wife, a French aristocrat, who leaves him a medieval icon, a Black Madonna.

Puzzled by its’ significance, he is drawn into confrontation with a mysterious brotherhood who call themselves The Friends of Silence. He fears they wish to kidnap his daughter, an eleven year old French child he has just met for the first time.

His wife and mother are murdered, on different continents, the same day. The only clues, cryptic medieval tarot cards, bearing on their backs the coat of arms of his deceased wifes’ family, with the inscription ‘Pour la foi J’endure’

Desperate to protect his daughter he flees to the Languedoc region of southern France, following clues concerning the connection between his wife, mother and daughter and the icon, the Black Madonna.

But who are the Friends of Silence? Why are he and his daughter pursued by neo-Nazis and the Israeli secret service? What secret lies in the ancient Cathar castle of Montsegur, high in the foothills of the Pyrenees?