The Camel’s Child by William Barnwell

A man in search of the killers of his sister when he was young and helpless to stop it, has prepared himself over the years to meet any challenge. Berry Cane IV is a computer engineer when people start dying in his company. He investigates and discovers a deadly enemy: a new-born Lawrence of Arabia.

The two are much alike, but with different goals. Cane wants to avenge his sister’s death; the new Lawrence of Arabia wants to destroy all the polluting oil on the Arabian Peninsula with dirty bombs, using as a trigger the supercomputers Cane has helped create. With many twists and turns, the two clash in a terrific struggle using all their wits.

At the end, because of the training given to them by Cane, the supercomputers save the day; but only one man will be able to leave the desert he finds himself in. Using information found in the letters of the real Lawrence of Arabia sent to his great-grandfather in 1918, Cane prevails by the skin of his teeth.

THE CAMEL’S CHILD is available from Amazon.

*****

This book is evocative and suspenseful. The action scenes are very intense! Barnwell’s settings and characters are vivid and authentic. His focus on Charlotte, North Carolina is a wonderful, but rare tribute to a great city. The Camel’s Child is seductive and in the end, very satisfying.

*****

Simon & Schuster bought the paperback rights of The Blessing Papers published in England in 1980 and contracted Barnwell for three more in a science-fantasy series that was well received.

His fifth novel, The Scheme-of-the-Month Club, was reviewed as being a comic romp in South Carolina akin to what Carl Hiaasen does in Florida.

His sixth novel, The Dungeon Below Bling-Bling High, is a Young Adult novel about the failure of learning mired in federal regulations that demanded that “excellence” and “high expectations” had to rise yearly with only a hint to most students about what that might mean. Such demands were always rising, but the students felt that they, as students, were always falling. This did not make for fertile learning ground. In addition, a fear of something horrible lurking somewhere in the school’s basement was pervasive, but denied, until a fateful decision was made by some in the student body.

His seventh novel, The Camel’s Child,involves the WWI desert legend Lawrence of Arabia, reincarnated as a hardcore villain in our time. But now he is an idiot savant of killing and has a big plan to fulfill like the old Lawrence. What can the hero do when all the oil in the entire Arabian Peninsula is about to be blown up by Lawrence’s conspiracy, and Lawrence of Arabia himself is after the hero to kill him for knowing about it?

He is serializing his eighth novel in eBook form, a science-fantasy novel he had started years before: I, Lord Several. A portion of this novel is posted at his website: williambarnwell.net.

He is currently working on his ninth novel, a PI thriller, Red Toe Nails.

Barnwell is a member of the Authors Guild and the International Thriller Writers group (ITW).

More about all of his work and some excerpts can also be found at his website.