All Lies

Andrew Cunningham

Contents (41)

All Lies

By Andrew Cunningham

Books by Andrew Cunningham

Wisdom Spring

All Lies

Eden Rising Trilogy

Eden Rising

Eden Lost

Eden's Legacy (Due December 2015)

Arthur Macarthur Series of Children's Mysteries (as A.R. Cunningham)

The Mysterious Stranger

The Ghost Car

The Creeping Sludge

Prisoner in the Sky

The Ride of Doom

Acknowledgements

I couldn't do any of these books without the constant love and support from my wife, Charlotte. Thank you! Thank you as well, to my mother for her encouragement and enthusiasm after reading the early drafts of All Lies.

To my father, from whom I inherited my love of mysteries.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Author's Note

Wisdom Spring by Andrew Cunningham

About the Author

Prologue

"I come from a long line of idiots…"

Those were his last words. I was tempted to have them inscribed on his headstone, because, in fact, he wasn't wrong. My family did have an abnormally high incidence of stupidity running through its genes. As far back as I could determine, my ancestors—the men, to be specific—were known for their questionable actions, actions that usually left them dead.

That worried me of course, as I was the next in line. An idiot-in-waiting, I suppose.

I would love to know what the rest of that sentence was going to be. Maybe "I come from a long line of idiots … but thank God you're normal," or "… and it's up to you, son, to change the pattern." Sadly, it was probably more along the lines of "… and the future doesn't look any brighter."

It wasn't a lack of intelligence by any means. As far as I know, my ancestors all had the normal allotment of brains. There was a politician, a scientist, and even a minister mixed in somewhere down the line. My recently deceased father had been a university professor.

No, it had nothing to do with intelligence. Sometimes it was simply a wrong-place, wrong-time issue. More often though, it was a case of being confronted with an either/or decision and always making the wrong choice, usually out of greed.

Early examples of my boneheaded ancestors—all on my father's side of the family—included a relative in the mid-1800s in England who made a bet that he could sneak into Windsor Castle and meet Queen Victoria. Two things went wrong: 1) The queen wasn't there; and 2) Having accomplished the unlikely feat of scaling one of the castle walls, he tripped on some steps, fell, and landed on his head. He died a few hours later. I doubt if you will find any official mention of the incident in Windsor Castle logs of the time. Too humorous for the log books.