Inhaltsangabe
Jack Dawkins was just an ordinary sort of man in his early twenties and he had had a job working in a warehouse for a delivery company. He hadn’t been particularly interested in the job, but he did know what was wanted of him and so he usually did it quite well.
One day he had been looking at his travel book and he had turned around and seen his old pal Peter Webster. It just happened that Peter had been his close pal when they were both younger, but Peter borrowed his uncle’s car and had a crash where he was killed instantaneously. Now if Jack was seeing Peter there, and Peter was dead, that just made Jack think that the image before him must be a ghost. Peter had then told Jack that yes, he was dead and that he had been told to come back to try and get some help from his old pal. Peter didn’t know if he had gone to Heaven or to Hell but he was somewhere in an ‘inner world’ where they just seemed to have to wait to get any promotion. If they did get involved in anything that can do some good then for doing that they may get some bonus points to lift them up a bit in this inner world. Peter tempted Jack by telling him that he could get him some money from some horse racing bets and eventually, Jack gave in and tried. It was so successful that Peter had then moved on to suggest a lottery win and that too was also successful. Peter then told Jack that if he would only help his friends, to get some bonus points, he could get a lot more money, after all, Peter said, Jack couldn’t lose because they couldn’t take any material things like money with them into their ‘inner’ world.
Jack agreed to meet these other people who he then discovered had, before they got to the world they were now in had been quite high-flying stockbrokers. Jack went along with them and they told him that what they were doing would have been illegal in the real world but, as they are only ghosts, no one can trace them or stop them. They carried on getting Jack more and more money until he was finally acclaimed as the richest man in the world. From there, things began to get more complicated for Jack and his young wife Jennifer but, together, they did seem to manage to get through the problems.
His problems continued until, while he was on holiday with both his and Jennifer’s parents, it became obvious that he was going to need to have some security. He did find someone who knew (and was in some way vaguely related to), an ex-Spanish Army Major who was starting to run a personal security business in Spain. Jack got this man to look after their security, even after they had returned home to Britain.
The stockbroker’s ghosts had told Jack that after they had got him the money, for them to get bonus points he would have to make donations to worthy causes, such as world crises, whenever they happened. Now, it was at about that time that he heard about a severe drought in the Horn of Africa, mainly in Ethiopia, that in turn caused quite a famine. Jack looked into this and then he decided that since that country was close to the Oceans (that had plenty of water in them) he should be able to get that purified enough to solve the problem. This, he then decided to do and when he announced that he would do that, neighbouring countries to Ethiopia, namely, Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti all asked why he couldn’t also help them.
This then is how the story continued from him initially considering desalination of the sea water and pumping it into all of these countries. Yes, of course, he does do that, but then he must continue to find more and more causes to donate to, mustn’t he? Perhaps by the end of the book, you as a reader may have started to believe that he could have done even more if he had only had your foresight! The decision then must be down to what you believe that it should be.
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