OBL. Level 3. Chemical Secret

Classics, modern fiction, non-fiction and more. Written for secondary and adult students the Oxford Bookworms Library has seven reading levels from A1-C1 of the CEFR.

There are two ways of committing a crime. You can do it with your eyes open, or you can do it with your eyes closed. Not many of us intend to do wrong, but almost all of us close our eyes to certain kinds of crime. But what is a crime? Is it something that the law tells us is wrong, or something that we know in our hearts is wrong? There are many kinds of crime - crimes of greed, of violence, of anger and hate. But there are also less obvious crimes - the ones that we commit against the world: against the sky, the sea, the land. They are the crimes that we commit against the future and against our children - by closing our eyes and pretending that we cannot see.

John Duncan was an honest man, but he needed money. He had children to look after. He was ready to do anything, and his bosses knew it.

They gave him the job because he couldn't say no; he couldn't afford to be honest. And the job was like a poison inside him. It changed him and blinded him, so that he couldn't see the real poison - until it was too late.