Borderline (Bishop)
by John Bishop

Part of volume, Borderlines .

THE STORY: BORDERLINE, chronicles the psychic disintegration of Charles Graham, a young advertising/marketing executive who, it would seem, “has it all” —a good job, a loving wife and children, a comfortable home, etc. But, beneath the surface, he is beset by a gnawing dissatisfaction, which is triggered into active hostility when an apparently unprovoked double murder is committed in the house next door.

Drawing away from wife and children, and allowing his career to falter, Charles becomes embroiled in a series of disastrous extramarital affairs, culminating in the ultimate violence of murder.

Meanwhile, a “lecturer,” with maps and slides, traces the genealogy of his self-destructive conduct back to his forebears' involvement in the violent border wars of medieval Scotland.