Think the Border Reivers disappeared in 1603? Think again!

If you presumed that the notorious Anglo-Scottish Border Reivers just faded into history with the Union of the Crowns in 1603, think again.

These men of extreme violence, who had spent over two hundred years perfecting the art while indulging in blood feuds and giving words such as blackmail and bereave to the English language, simply disappeared underground.

And they haven’t been heard of again. Until now.

When a petty criminal is arrested on a drugs charge in Las Vegas and asks to see FBI agent Jack Bell, everyone simply assumes that he is looking for some bargaining leverage to get his sentence reduced. Maybe turn witness and go into the protection program.

But the story that this small time crook has to say takes Bell on a journey out of the States and into the rural border heartlands as he attempts to unravel the ties of the world’s supposed oldest secret criminal organisation – the mythical Order of the Broken Ram.

The criminal, one Sam Elliot, reckons that he is an associate of the Border Reiver organisation that not only predates the Italian Cosa Nostra, but holds sway over it.

Elliot says that when the authorities began deporting families from the borders as an attempt to break the cycle of violence and gangsterism, all they did was transport the problem with them.

So some of the earliest settlers in America were descended from these clans and were members of the Order, a Masonic style organisation with strange rituals and no known written history.

In fact, only one member has ever talked to the authorities in its 500 year history – one Geordie Burn, who gave something of a confessional the night before he was hanged – in the 17th century.

Bell learns of the Order’s supposed deeds in the Wild West, the Civil War and how they accumulated land, power and influence very early in American history with their own brand of special violence.

Bell begins digging and gets onto the trail of the order while in the UK with the help of a female CIA officer who has been sent to keep check on him.

But while they are chasing history around the countryside, a number of mafia-style hits are taking place around America as the Order seemingly cuts all ties with anyone who may talk.

While Bell is in the UK he not only discovers that he himself is a direct blood descendent of one of the clans, which puts him in a real quandary and raises questions about his whole identity, but also discovers documentation that suggests the Order of the Broken Ram has infiltrated America to the very top – former Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson and Astronaut Neil Armstrong among others (Reiver surnames) are strongly suggested to have possibly been members or at least linked– with Nixon very probably a Grand Master.