The Dirty Bombers

"The Quarry," Rory croaked. "There's been a massacre! They're dead.... all DEAD!"

Rork is a young seagull who discovers that local businessmen are secretly culling the birds in his colony. He finds himself thrust unwillingly into leadership of the gulls and organises a dramatic protest. Factions within the gull colony resort to more vicious methods to avenge their kinfolk and Rork struggles on two fronts to contain the inevitable escalation.

Anne Rigby is a feisty young reporter for the local paper who realises that the birds have a message to convey and searches for the reason. The local population takes sides in the conflict that follows, which is followed avidly on national television. This culminates in a pitched battle between gulls and gunmen, centred on and around the elegant launching party of a superyacht belonging to a local dignitary. The conclusion is as sudden and surprising as it is unexpected.

"Seagulls are getting more and more precocious, daring and, some would say, vicious. News stories appear almost daily describing their attacks or their impudence. Restaurateurs regard them as a plague. Individual people are attacked by gulls. I was pondering the intransigence shown by the Palestinians and Israelis and trying to imagine how it could be resolved when one such gull article prompted me to write The Dirty Bombers," says Ed.