Stranger than fiction

[Sunnie Gill]

The coach of a national sporting team is found near death in his hotel room during a major
competition the after his team loses an unrated side. There are whispers of match fixing. At first it's assumed he died of natural causes, then a day or two later police announce the coach was strangled . Would you read the book? I would.

It's all true folks. For those who don't live in cricketing countries. Former English test cricketer and coach of Pakistan was found unconscious in his hotel room in Kingston, Jamaica. He was pronounced dead shortly after arrival at hospital.

Are there others out there who read news stories and think it'd make a good book? What are your favourite news stories you'd be happy to read in a book?

[Vincent Holland-Keen]

You're right, Bob Woolmer's death does sound like the stuff of a novel, which I guess makes it strange as fiction, rather than stranger. A story I would put as stranger than fiction is the Alexander Litvinenko affair. The murder of a dissident, the police investigation, the political intrigue, that would all be fair game, but could a fiction writer really get away with killers who try to effect murder through use of a relatively slow acting radioactive poison (compared to a poison-tipped umbrella, for example) that leaves traces across half of London and on a handful of passenger aircraft?

[Sunnie Gill]

Now that was a bizarre one wasn't it. I found myself wondering whether Litvinenko was prepared to sacrifice his own life in order to implicate Putin.

I remember that poisoned umbrella thing. If a writer had come up with that you wonder whether reviews would have panned it as not credible.

Mind you, the CIA came up with some rather bizarre ways of trying to get rid of Castro in the 60's as well didn't they. Wasn't the idea of poisoned cigars tossed about?