Just ahead of Episode Forty-Two of Burning Daylight, thank you again for your kind comments about this caper and all our other Tales for Our Time. Over four years ago now, we launched this series of audio adventures on a whim, threw it together somewhat hastily, and learned on the job. So I'm enormously grateful for your appreciation of it.
As to this current tale, Florida Steyn Clubber Jan Schiebout is glad the protagonists are finally getting on with it:
Dear Mark,
Finally! This is Daylight's riskiest gambit ever, and his state-of-life reckoning inspiration to put it all on the line. I love it!!! I had never before read Burning Daylight, which is turning into my favorite London tome. I have resisted the temptation to take advantage of a well-meaning friend's copy to see what comes next. Your nightly recitations are far too enjoyable, and plot suspense this thick I've not experienced in years...
Thanks from the bottom of my heart for this nighttime stroll, Mark, as I try to get the images of the body of the police commander in Kabul after the Taliban was finished with him, out of my mind. Where are the more savage barbarians? Are they surrounding the Kabul airport, in the White House and the Pentagon, or about to meet in Davos in January 2022?
Steady, Jan. Our nightly serial is supposed to be a bedtime detox from the fiasco of a joke superpower. Tim Neilson, a First Weekend Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club from locked-down Victoria, says:
It's a great break from the news cycle, Mark.
Until one starts speculating whether there are certain nation states today to which Daylight's condition and musings seem strangely analogous.
(Sorry if I've harshed the mellow.)
You have a point, Tim. In tonight's episode, Daylight decides to apply the Washington Afghan model to his own companies:
"Look here, Larry, you know me. You know when I make up my mind I mean it. Well, I've sure made up my mind. I'm tired of the whole game. I'm letting go of it as fast as I can, and a smash is the quickest way to let go."
Hegan stared at his chief, then passed his horror-stricken gaze on to Dede, who nodded in sympathy.
"So let her smash, Larry," Daylight went on...
"You are crazy, Daylight!" the little lawyer cried out. "This is all babbling lunacy. What is the matter with you? You haven't been eating a drug or something?"
Has he been getting into the old Helmand hashish? If you're a member of The Mark Steyn Club you can hear Part Forty-Two of our serialization of Burning Daylight simply by clicking here and logging-in. All previous episodes can be found here.
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Please join me tomorrow for Part Forty-Three of Burning Daylight - and, earlier in the day, a brace of Songs of the Week, one right here, the other on Serenade Radio at 5.30pm London time/12.30pm New York.
