Hostage: London: Diary of Julian Despard

Geoffrey Household

apr 2015 · Open Road Media

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A terrorist with a conscience turns against his radical cadre in a desperate attempt to prevent a nuclear nightmare

Julian Despard has devoted his life to the New Revolution. As cell leader for the notorious international terrorist organization Magma, he works tirelessly in the shadows for the downfall of established governments. But in the aftermath of the successful theft of a large arms shipment in the Mediterranean—a criminal operation that he masterminded—Despard suddenly finds himself questioning his radical ideals.
 
Magma’s recent victory has brought Despard and his cohorts nuclear materials to be deployed against one of the world’s most populous cities: London. Despard’s conscience will not allow him to take part in the horrific slaughter of many thousands—perhaps millions—of innocents, but attempting to prevent the organization from going through with its plan will turn his former compatriots into lethal, unforgiving enemies. Still, Despard can see no alternative—even with the police closing in on one side and terrorist killers approaching from the other—for the clock is ticking down the seconds to doomsday.
 
Written decades before 9/11 and the realities of twenty-first-century global terrorism, Geoffrey Household’s chilling, eerily prescient thriller is even more powerful and relevant today than when it first appeared in print.

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Geoffrey Household (1900–1988) was born in England. In 1922 he earned a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from the University of Oxford. After graduation, he worked at a bank in Romania before moving to Spain in 1926 and selling bananas as a marketing manager for the United Fruit Company.

In 1929 Household moved to the United States, where he wrote children’s encyclopedia content and children’s radio plays for CBS. From 1933 to 1939, he traveled internationally as a printer’s-ink sales rep. During World War II, he served as an intelligence officer for the British army, with posts in Romania, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, and Persia. After the war, he returned to England and wrote full time until his death. He married twice, the second time in 1942 to Ilona Zsoldos-Gutmán, with whom he had three children, a son and two daughters.

Household began writing in the 1920s and sold his first story to the Atlantic Monthly in 1936. His first novel, The Terror of Villadonga, was published during the same year. His first short story collection, The Salvation of Pisco Gabar and Other Stories, appeared in 1938. Altogether, Household wrote twenty-eight novels, including four for young adults; seven short story collections; and a volume of autobiography, Against the Wind (1958). Most of his novels are thrillers, and he is best known for Rogue Male (1939), which was filmed as Man Hunt in 1941 and as a TV movie under the novel’s original title in 1976.