'Lost Estates'

This is part of a running review of Lost Estates by Mark Valentine (Swan River Press 2024)

The title story of the collection! And it begins in fine form. 'I was playing the trans-dimensional crumhorn when the man from the Treasury called.' As the plot develops, we learn about the unusual musical combo the narrator was once part of and the unusual link to the inventor of a perpetual motion machine. 

The group is reassembled in response to the man from the Treasury. The latter is in search of an 'estate' that is in fact something altogether stranger and more significant. A musical performance turns into a very unusual gig, The theme of disappearance - accidental or deliberate - is central again. Did the perpetual motion machine work, but in an altogether unexpected fashion?

A light story, this, but not a frivolous one. It reflects a not-uncommon ambition, to discover that our quirky little interest might have wider significance - that we are as important as the people we are told are important.