Bleed for the Queen

By: Johann Wentzel

Narrated by: Jeff Blair

Synopsis

Bleed for the Queen is in part the story of Kobus Cronje, a pathologist from South Africa in Northern Ireland and his attempt to come to terms with the philosophical and psychological consequences of the brutal murder of his sister-in-law and her five month old baby.

His own guilt and retribution causes his moral compass to go haywire in the way that he sees his wife, Lucy, after she stood in for him at the morgue on that fateful Sunday morning.

Bleed for the Queen is also the story of the city Londonderry. A 400-year old city that he felt he had to defend no matter what the cost. Kobus Cronje, the main character, losing touch with reality more and more...seeing himself in the history of the walled city, a wall that was never breached. Feeling her heart beat as if his own, walking next to the wall, circling the city with his hand running along the wall, reliving the ancient pulse.

Kobus Cronje a man craving for acceptance but afraid of the personal pain that human loss may bring, turned to his new city for acceptance. Overwhelmed by the four century old history of his new adopted city he took it on himself to be the saviour of a city that did not need saving. An ordinary man that feels deserted, by not only his own country but also his wife, willing himself the guardian at the gate. Willing the people of this beautiful dark city to see, to force them to realise what they are destroying while at the same time fighting his own demons.

Working with the dead and cut off from the living, he slowly loses touch with reality. His own doubts blocked out he started to see himself as the new pulse, the cleanser at any price of this beautiful old city. This city scared but never taken: the mother that he misses, the wife that he lost, the daughter that he never had, willing himself to bring the ultimate sacrifice for that that he believes in - to win her back at any price.

Kobus Cronje: struggling in his own mind but never coming to terms with the events of his own life - a life superimposed on those events that raged around him 400 years ago. Historic events that started in 1608 when King James 1 gave the City of Derry to the City of London Corporation.

A time further shaped by the Irish potato famine of the 1840’s. History still playing out today after the troubles of the last thirty years...History in the making with the birth of their child, Carla’s child four months after the court case ended.

Bleed for the Queen is a fictitious crime thriller of obsession, sex and murder.

©2014 Johann Wentzel (P)2019 Johann Wentzel