The Bond

or Last Man Standing

By: Nick Corble

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Spend too much time in the past and you might find you have no future. The Class of '77 thought their school year was unique, and it was - just not in the way they imagined. After leaving school they decide to meet up every year for a reunion, to cling on to that sense of specialness for a bit longer. But the unexpected death of their talisman shocks them into creating The Bond. Everyone agrees to pay a sub into a fund, so that when, decades later there's only one of them left - the last man standing - he'll have the funds to create a kind of lasting memorial which will ensure their immortality and keep their flame burning forever. Death may be inevitable, but it can be sidestepped for now. Except it can't. While the reunions act as a welcome retreat from the challenges of becoming adults, husbands, employers and fathers, there's something going on. A series of freak accidents steadily reduces their number. They may all be flawed, but one of them is fatally so: there's a murderer in their midst. Becoming the last man standing is suddenly an awful yet realistic possibility; but for now, there's the business of life to get on with. It takes the return of a lost sheep to spot what's happening ... but has he arrived too late? And is he too feckless to prevent the final reckoning that's being planned for them all? The Bond or Last Man Standing is a black comic murder mystery set against the backdrop of real events over the past forty years. Using humour and tension to tell its story through the eyes of a few key characters, it also carries with it a report card for a generation. How will history judge them when it's time to pass the baton on? And how will they judge themselves?