Peter Bartram's Blog - Posts Tagged "blackmail"
When truth is stranger than fiction
One of the joys of writing fiction is that you can invent characters and events which have never happened in real life. Or have they? I received the biggest shock of my fiction writing career when I completed the first draft of my latest Crampton of the Chronicle adventure, The Mother’s Day Mystery.
I don’t think I’m giving too much away if I tell you that one of the characters in the plot is a schoolboy who blackmails one of his teachers. I thought this sub-plot worked very well in the story although it was unlikely to happen in real life. So, I was astonished to read in the papers the day after I’d completed the last page of the first draft of my book that a schoolboy at a well-known English public school had done just that.
The bad boy had actually been sent to prison for four and half years for making firebombs and throwing them onto a British motorway. But the sentence also covered eight burglary and two blackmail charges – with a couple of thefts from supermarkets also taken into account. The lad stole £52,000 of goods and equipment from his school. Then he had the brazen cheek to ask the headmaster twice for £10,000 to stop doing it. He wanted the money paid in the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
What made the coincidence with my book even stronger was the fact that the young criminal was described by his trial judge as “very intelligent” and “possibly the most able chemist the college has produced in recent years”. The judge lamented: “He’s a very bright boy and for some reason he takes to burgling the school, blackmailing the headteacher and making incendiary devices and throwing them off motorway bridges.” In The Mother’s Day Mystery, my schoolboy is also something of boffin in the chemistry lab.
I expect, like me, you’ve heard that old saying: truth is stranger than fiction. I’m not sure it’s right all the time – especially when I see some of the fantasy books that are out there these days. But if we’re keeping the action limited to people and rooted on planet Earth, then it could be right. My recent experience certainly suggests so.
I don’t think I’m giving too much away if I tell you that one of the characters in the plot is a schoolboy who blackmails one of his teachers. I thought this sub-plot worked very well in the story although it was unlikely to happen in real life. So, I was astonished to read in the papers the day after I’d completed the last page of the first draft of my book that a schoolboy at a well-known English public school had done just that.
The bad boy had actually been sent to prison for four and half years for making firebombs and throwing them onto a British motorway. But the sentence also covered eight burglary and two blackmail charges – with a couple of thefts from supermarkets also taken into account. The lad stole £52,000 of goods and equipment from his school. Then he had the brazen cheek to ask the headmaster twice for £10,000 to stop doing it. He wanted the money paid in the cryptocurrency, Bitcoin.
What made the coincidence with my book even stronger was the fact that the young criminal was described by his trial judge as “very intelligent” and “possibly the most able chemist the college has produced in recent years”. The judge lamented: “He’s a very bright boy and for some reason he takes to burgling the school, blackmailing the headteacher and making incendiary devices and throwing them off motorway bridges.” In The Mother’s Day Mystery, my schoolboy is also something of boffin in the chemistry lab.
I expect, like me, you’ve heard that old saying: truth is stranger than fiction. I’m not sure it’s right all the time – especially when I see some of the fantasy books that are out there these days. But if we’re keeping the action limited to people and rooted on planet Earth, then it could be right. My recent experience certainly suggests so.
