The Four Red Roses
by Francis Carr
The Four Red Roses; part imaginary blood and thunder adventure story, and part a possible explanation of real and terrible events that remain veiled in secrecy to this day. A reflection on the morality of revenge by the individual, rather than the State, and the justification for retribution when society is prevented by institutionalised evil from exercising its moral obligations.
In The French Alps, author Francis Carr enters a small – but very real – post office, displaying poster images of over twenty babies and children, lost during the previous ten years in the surrounding area, and still missing. How was this possible and why? What lay behind this terrible record of events? How could a community have come to terms with the grief and anguish that these disappearances must have caused? What had these murdered victims stumbled across, which merited a death sentence to silence them? What involvement must there have been by those in authority, resulting in bungled investigations, delays, and whitewash, in apparent hopes the events would fade from the collective memory and eventually be forgotten?
This real life experience remained in the author’s memory, adding to knowledge of other unexplained events in rural France, including the 1952 murder of Sir Jack Drummond and his family among other more recent and no less strange events in the treacherous mountainous regions.
The Four Red Roses provides one horrific explanation, and a proposed fight-back by two determined individuals, leaving the reader to decide on the morality of their actions, and that of those who realised what had been done in their name, and had granted absolution in the name of natural justice and the greater good.