Ian Browne’s Bayeux Adventure is a novel set in Brentford, West London and Bayeux, Normandy, France.
Ian is fourteen when his brother Marty goes missing. His family suspect that their seventeen-year-old son who has been diagnosed with Kleptomania has fled and become a runaway.
With his mother Linda suffering from depression, the family is held together by super Dad Steve.
Plagued by poor hearing and eyesight Ian is a natural victim to the bullies at his local comprehensive where his nemesis Kyle makes his life a misery.
With a love of football and an obsessive compulsion to complete the 2016 season Premiership set he’s been collecting; Ian goes in pursuit of two missing cards. When he accidentally stumbles upon a discarded piece of paper advertising free football cards in Bayeux Town Square, he pretends to be going on a scouting trip to Wales only to take the ferry to Calais where his adventure begins.
Accompanied by imaginary friend Stan who showed up when his brother first went missing, he witnesses two Vietnamese men being human trafficked in the back of a trailer. Things go from bad to worse for Ian when a criminal gang abduct him, and he is forced to work in a grow house, where, by a twist of fate he finds his brother who explains how his kleptomania led him to stealing a treasured photograph from a boxing club which belonged to a London gangster and him having to flee.
After many twists and turns, the two brothers perform a daring escape from the grow house back across the channel where they now face the dilemma of the picture and how to return it.
Ian Browne’s Bayeux Adventure is a coming-of-age/thriller novel which celebrates the friendship of brothers and the unconditional love of two parents struggling to do their best. Fast moving, funny and uncomplicated, the novel floats effortlessly between the two cultures. A suspense thriller in essence it is also a very human drama – one which makes you feel warm inside when you’ve completed it - tucked up safe in bed with a mug of Hot Chocolate.