The Prayer Book Cowboy

a Tom Severn Mystery

The eco-green detective, Tom Severn, has his own position on the Northern Gateway Pipeline and the Kinder Morgan refit. Cycling against the grain has become a ‘vocation’! Severn cycles inner Vancouver and the North Shore. The ‘nodding donkey’ cycles in southern Alberta while excavators and dump trucks pull bitumen from the Tar Sands in the north. Somebody’s not paying attention or perhaps paying too much attention. Kidnapping, extortion, fanaticism! “Everyone in the place was in a ‘prayer meeting’ – texting, researching, whatevering – cupped hands blessing their techno-servers in techno-servitude. One couple in the corner was in deep conversation and seemed to be touching each other’s hands and arms as they talked – real screen, real time, real life. How ancient?" Then Severn gets a call from Roger Buck – an oil man gone environmentalistic! The prayer book takes on multiple meanings as BCers ‘pray’ that the pipe never hits the soil, the rock, or the stream.