Strictly No Flowers - Novella

Scott Plenty (not his real name) writes crime thrillers. His gruesome

serial killer novels have taken him to the cusp of the big time. There

is a massive new contract in the offing, glory (and the Late Review)

beckons. But Scott wants more. He wants the truth. And when he reads

about the death of 5,000 French civilians at the hands of Bomber Command

in WWII he thinks he's found a truth it would really be worth writing

about.

He travels to France and begins digging. And finds

himself in the midst of a passionate affair with a French woman. Even as

the truth about the war crime proves more elusive the affair becomes

more intense until he loses himself in it.

And then, out

of the blue, he is set up in a drugs bust, stopped by the police in

possession of 2 kilos of cocaine. In prison on remand he wakes to a

nightmare. The drug dealers in the prison see him as a crazy 'anglais',

an amateur, foolish enough to try and invade their patch. He's a marked

man. Easy meat. Until he is befriended by a killer,a French gangster

entranced by the idea that here is a man who can tell his story.

So,

chapter by chapter, day by day, Scott's account of his search for the

truth becomes a realtime literary quest for survival. If he's to survive

until the trumped up charges are overturned he has to keep writing. But

who set him up and why? And does Scott really want to know the truth

about the sort of man he is?