In a fast-paced thriller, Alfredo Acle Tomasini, intertwines three parallel stories with sensitivity and a deft touch: a comatose man that, even unconscious, is able to hear and reflect; his children, without a clear reason, cling on to keep him alive against his will and despite his long time partner's insistence to let him die; the plot of a novel that she reads to him at his bedside, because she feels that this is a way to connect with him, because the novel recounts events that marked their lives. As in The untimely death of the President, the author manages to pose a witty and entertaining novel within the best tradition of the suspense novels with all its ingredients: crime, intrigue, romance and thrills. Just gone exposes starkly how every person reveals his true values when subject to extreme conditions; No one escapes their true identity under such circumstances -neither the traitor, the blood relative nor the loyal companion.
Writing was always a parallel activity of my professional career. I published several essays and books on business administration, planning and public policies. At the same time, I contributed every fortnight as editorialist in an important financial newspaper. 2009 meant a breaking point in my life. I realized that the limit of postponing personal projects is life itself and if you delay too much, you probably will not have the time or the health to do what you always wanted; So I decided to end my professional career as business consultant and dedicate most of my time to write novels. Why novels and not to continue writing books and essays on topics I was already recognized in the market place? Certainly this was a challenge. However, my main motive was to be able to produce a quality work that, could capture the readers' attention from the beginning to the end, and to make them react on specific issues that we all could confront sooner or later. Formerly, I had discussed social and political problems in a formal way. But now, I want to address them using the creative possibilities that are available when writing fiction. Once I read an author's advice that seem to me very wise: Write about what you know. This advice summarizes three elements to use as raw material to start writing a novel; the environments where we have been, and the persons and their circumstances that we have met throughout our life. So having being a public servant for many years at the beginning of my professional life, my first novel was a political thriller; "The untimely dead of the President". The suspense plot, that develops in a six hours lapse, is about ambition, and the collusion between economic and political interests to take command. In "Just gone", a thriller that intertwines three parallel stories, I wanted to go deeper on the character's motives by situating them in extreme circumstances, because it is when a person shows the real weight of its personal values. Friendship, loyalty, honesty are not absolute concepts because they are shown depending on the conditions. In good times, we have a lot of friends, but in difficult circumstances, probably we would not have that many. My main experience as a novelist has been to see, how the characters that I created in the paper become alive, when I chat with my readers. I enjoy hearing their sentiments about them and how they felt at different stages of the plot. This is an incentive to continue in this path raising the bar.
