Alfred Balm

The Globetrotter Alfred Balm

"On a bench in the central parc of Amsterdam, an old salt is sharing his memories with a contemporary senior, who spent his life maintaining the parc. The man is a simple but content pensioner who cared for the myriad of plants and flowers with dedication but the boundaries of the parc determined his living space, he never travelled beyond them. With increasing wonder and amazement, he listens in awe to the sometimes blood curdling narratives of the old sailor sitting next to him. The stories are opening a door to a world he never knew existed, revealing horizons that were always beyond his observation, until now. The sea smart sailor takes him to far away places, to the brothels in tropical harbours, the fights, the deadly danger but also the victories and the magic of a life spent at sea. The many amorous adventures, the brotherhood among seadogs, the tragedies, but also the enormous wealth resulting from risky undertakings, and how to quickly lose those fortunes again. The adventures are so realistically told that he imagines himself in the role of the sailor, but when the narrator pauses, to refresh his memories, the man contemplates about his own uneventful life. As soon as the mariner continues however, he imagines himself threatened by the enormous Komodo dragons on the Indonesian Gili Motang Island or finds himself in a deadly battle with the Nazi criminals of the ODESSA organization in Argentina. But he also wakes up in the warm embrace of the wicked woman married to his boss and he is running for his life again. The Globetrotter, number four in the series, is a novel packed with thrilling adventures, written in the best tradition of Cussler or Grisham.