Guillermo Martinez: The Oxford Murders

Guillermo Martinez is an Argentinian author who has a PhD in Mathematical Science. He has written several highly acclaimed novels, and this one, The Oxford Murders, won the Planeta Prize.

The Planeta Prize, founded some 53 years ago, is not one I'd ever heard of, but it seems to be highly prestigious in the Spanish-speaking world. It also seems to be worth about $200,000 in cash, so it's definitely one worth winning.

The Oxford Murders turns out to be a classic detective story. I was going to say an old-fashioned detective story, but that would give the wrong impression. What is more, it belongs in that particular niche of the crime-fiction genre in which the puzzle is the overwhelming centre of attention.

By the way, while I think of it, the purest form of the detective novel which centres upon the puzzle is the locked-room mystery. What happens in such cases is that a person is found dead inside a locked room -- or sealed chamber, or whatever. The question that the detectives have to answer is basically how it was done; though the question of who did it and why is never forgotten.

One of the masters of the locked-room mystery was John Dickson Carr. Carr was at one time immensely popular, though I was never very keen on his work myself. To me it seemed to concentrate on the complications of how the crime was committed to such an extent that character and credibility often went out of the window. But in his day his books sold in vast numbers.

Should you wish to read an analysis of all the possible variations on the locked-room theme, you can find one in chapter XVII of Carr's novel The Three Coffins. And, if you're a really dedicated researcher in that field, you will also wish to track down an article by Bill Pronzini in the November 1981 issue of The Writer (volume 94, pages 11-15), entitled 'But That's Impossible'. Yes, it's amazing what information I've got tucked away in my files, isn't it? I surprise myself sometimes.

Back to The Oxford Murders. As the title makes clear, the novel is set in Oxford; the year is 1993. The narrator is an Argentinian mathematician who is spending a year in Oxford. Before long there occurs the first in a series of murders, and, in trying to solve these, the narrator works closely with an eminent man called Arthur Seldom.

Seldom is said to be a mathematical genius, and his area of expertise is logic. His most famous work is a philosophical extension of Godel's Theorem of Incompleteness, and his book includes a chapter on serial killers.

In the series of murders which the novel describes, the killer always leaves a clue, and the clue takes the form of a mathematical symbol which is clearly part of a series.

Well, you get the idea. What we have here is a puzzle of the intellectual variety. The characters are well drawn and not without interest, but the main focus is on the mystery of the symbols. Who committed the crime, and why, takes second place.

As you would expect in a writer with a mathematical mind, the book is cleverly constructed and includes the usual series of bluffs and false endings at the conclusion.

All in all then, a modern example of a genre which was once wildly popular but has now faded by comparison with books about pathologists and Hannibal Lecters.

The Oxford Murders is the only one of Martinez's books to be translated into English. It was first published in the UK, in paperback, earlier this year, and I see from my copy that it has been reprinted three times already. So it has evidently been a success, though reviews are hard to come by.

The book is, however, recommended reading for the boys of Harrow School. Well, at least there isn't any sex in it, so it's a safer choice than some.

Loren D Estleman: Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes

The most interesting part of this novel is the author's Afterword; but more of that in a moment.

Loren D Estleman writes in both the mystery (crime) and historical-western genres. He first published a novel in 1976, since when he has produced 53 books and hundreds of short stories and articles; he has been a full-time writer since 1980 and has won lots of awards. In short, he is a professional.

As you would expect, therefore, Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes is a professional piece of work. That said, the title more or less gives away the plot, at least for those who are tolerably well read. Mr Holmes is, of course, the famous Sherlock. And Mr Hyde is one half of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Most people will know how that story goes, even if they haven't read it; there have been several movie versions. The mystery element in Estleman's book is therefore minimal; the interest lies in how he handles the thing.

(The doctor's name, by the way, should be pronounced Gee-kill; the same goes for Gertrude of that ilk, if you're a gardener. And the Stevenson original was, please note, short. World-famous, and short. A moral there, you might think?)

I can't say that I overwhelmingly recommend Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes, which first came out in 1979. It's a passably entertaining story, and (for an American) Estleman gets most of the period detail right. He does, however, refer to the 'trash basket' in several places, and there ain't no such animal in England. He also has a pretty vague idea about the value of money. But otherwise OK.

No, I write about the book here mainly for the Afterword, which seems to have been written for the 2001 reprint. Here the author talks about some of the editing and marketing problems that he experienced the first time around.

It is particularly interesting to note that his editor was thoughtful enough to suggest that his original ending wasn't really satisfactory; and she recommended a different one, which he accepted. What chance of getting such hands-on editing today, I wonder?

But now to the main point. On several occasions in the past -- most recently on 8 July -- I have written about the problems which can arise when a writer has the brilliant idea of writing a new novel featuring characters created by another writer, preferably one long since dead. In Estleman's case he was using, principally, Holmes.

'There is a popular misconception,' says Estleman, 'that the characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle passed into public domain some time ago. They are still very much in the control of those who administer his estate.'

Estleman says that he has no problem with this situation 'except for migraines caused by some of the people I have had to placate.' Estleman's agent from the 1970s told him that he had come close to quitting Alcoholics Anonymous during and after his conferences with those who controlled the Conan Doyle copyright.

Worse, Dr Jekyll and Mr Holmes was Estleman's second round with those people. He had earlier written Sherlock Holmes Vs Dracula. Estleman's editor at Doubleday therefore knew what was involved, and she told him that when the second book landed on her desk she had to go out for along walk before she could bring herself to read it.

Well, I think I said in an earlier post somewhere that my own experiences of trying to negotiate with copyright holders -- even if they are co-operative and helpful -- was sufficient to convince me that the rewards of using famous characters in your wonderful new novel are simply not worth the effort. So don't say you weren't warned.

If you must use famous characters from the past, make sure that they are out of copyright. And that may not be so easy to establish as you might think.

Francis Ellen: The Samplist

A while back, a reader of this blog asked me if I had heard of Francis Ellen's self-published novel The Samplist. At the time I hadn't; but I certainly have since.

Let's get the background out of the way first. Francis Ellen (a pseudonym) is a man with training in both music and computing. He was a guitar student at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, and subsequently did a master's degree in maths at Stirling University. Not surprisingly, therefore, his novel The Samplist is about computer-generated music. And, what's more, it comes complete with a CD of the music which is written about in the book; not many novels do that.

You can find a profile of Ellen in the Scotsman, and details of his book on his own publishing company web site. There you can also find extracts from reviews, an excerpt from the book, and you can listen to the music.

So far so good. And in due course I might have got around to finding a copy and reading it. However, in the meantime I find that Mr Ellen himself has been here and left a message, in the form of a comment on one of my posts. Unless you are an exceptionally keen reader of the GOB, and go back and read comments as they appear, you will probably not have seen it. And as it's long, and well worth reading, I am going to copy it in here.

This is what Francis Ellen had to say about my little essay on the way things are in the book world:

I noticed this discussion and as it concerned me on two fronts: my self-published novel, The Samplist, and the apparent 'desire' to create the appearance of a mastermind behind terrorism. I couldn't help but comment.

I self-published and yes, I got reviewed up the wazoo. The earliest reviews were horrendous, beyond rude. Two reviewers didn’t even read the back cover; they simply misquoted it (by sticking in their words and leaving out some of my words) and brandished their own rewrite as evidence of my lack of ability. (This was a 'legitimately' published novelist; trust no one!)

I did get a couple of great reviews early on as well but the turning point was a review in the Times Literary Supplement.

After that, things changed. The last two reviews of The Samplist (BBC Music Magazine and the British Science Fiction Association's Vector Magazine) were out of this world.

Why?

A word to self-publishers; every time you get a good review, send it to the next reviewer WITH the novel. My guess is that it's the ‘sheep’ effect; gradually, the reviews get better and better (the BBC Music Mag review trashed earlier reviewers for comparing me to Dickens, Heller and Flann O' Brien and then compared me to Tom Sharpe - well, Tom Sharpe'll do me thanks very much).

On the 'intelligent' terrorist: The reviews helped to get me two offers from agents. I rejected a heavy hitter and settled for a guy who seemed 'in-tune' with my writing. I recently sent off the first 10,000 words of my latest novel to him and he told me that he wouldn’t try to sell it 'In this climate' and that 'no editor would touch it.'

Why?

Because I used to work for a company that did the software security for a lot of government agencies that use three-letter acronyms and I know where the real holes are in the security AND I paint both the security agencies AND the terrorists as dimwits.

So, nobody wants my first novel because only two out of five people who read it love it and the other three hate it so there’s 'no market,' and I’m being censored because nobody wants to hear 'some' truth about the dreadful world in which we live. My writing is callous and offensive. My latest novel has a Muslim as the lead character. The whole terrorist 'thing' is viewed from the perspective of the kind of Muslim that doesn't really care about religion. The book also is about the new slaves of the American Empire: The H1 Niggers, and about the accelerated demise of the U.S. and the rise of China (as unwittingly promulgated by idiot politicians and deliberately by smart speculators).

I grew up reading, and reading about, writers on the edge. People who challenged the mass hypnosis of the day, but now I find that if I don’t wear a silly hat I don't get to create a narrator who lives and thinks differently from me. I thought this was the point of fiction, of literature, of entertainment?

I don’t even get the chance to become the victim of the first American Fatwa. My subject-matter is to be strangled at birth before my ham-fisted attempts to bring my feeble story to life are even completed.

As to publishers; a few more words: I have feedback from dockworkers and postmen and laborers; people who tell me they haven't read a book in thirty years and they loved my book but an endless list of publishers has turned me down (although in
each company there was at least one person who loved the book – if only I could get them all into the same company?).

I grew up in the roughest part of the roughest part of my country. I was perhaps the first person in my family to get an education. But every publisher I speak to is a 'literary' type. I'm writing for a completely different audience but I won't write 'about' druggies on housing estates so I lose my natural 'edge'. I write for people who normally watch TV. I write for an audience that is huge but the publishers don't 'get' them beyond patronizing celebrity tripe that they stuff down their throats (at great marketing cost).

Why can't I understand the market? Who are they to say, 'I loved the characters, the color….. but I didn’t warm to the story.' Didn’t warm to the story?

So?

Who cares? You know that others have 'warmed' to the story. Don't you have stock holders who want you to sell books? Sell the product. There is a demand but every single shopkeeper I try is as hard as trying to get a bloody agent. One store manager asked me to send a synopsis after the book was reviewed by the TLS.

Now I have 30,000 words of a great story that I have to write (another year at the day job) and I've already been told I'm wasting my time because I'll offend Americans (and the French) by suggesting that the security services are as dumb as the terrorists (and all of them are as monstrous as they are incompetent).

The TLS said The Samplist was 'saying something important'. I wrote the book as a pure entertainment. If The Samplist said anything important then this book really IS important.

But I cannot argue with the genius of the publishing industry. Should an executive hand over a million dollars to a politician for a book that reads like the author wrote it after he got hit in the ass by a tranquilizer gun… well, he did the right thing because nobody can predict the 'market'.

I can predict MY bloody market. Publishers should start hiring people with some commercial acumen and keep their opinions out of it.

Robert Charles Wilson: Spin

Robert Charles Wilson's Spin is a science-fiction novel. As such, it is far better than either Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days or John Twelve Hawks's The Traveller.

In Spin we have characters who are convincing as rounded individuals; in The Traveller the characters are pure cardboard. In Specimen Days the science fiction scarecly rises above the talking-squid level, but in Spin one feels that the writer actually knows what he is talking about and everything that is described could, all too easily, come about.

That said, both Specimen Days and The Traveller will far outsell Spin. In fact, both those books will probably shift a million, in various editions, worldwide. How many will Spin sell? Well, I'm not party to Wilson's royalty statements, but if you told me 10,000 I wouldn't be too surprised.

So, life isn't fair then? Nope. And there is nothing about the past history of publishing to suggest that talent, sound narrative technique, and a gripping story are guaranteed to get you the kind of hype which is needed to propel a book into the bestseller list.

Robert Charles Wilson is no beginner in the business of writing novels. He has written twelve so far, with more to come. He has won a variety of prizes for these, and for his short stories. He was born in California and moved to Canada when he was nine; he seems to be very proud of being Canadian. Sadly, his official web page does not give us a biography: I would like to know about his education, because to me (a non-scientist) he seems to write with authority about a number of scientific and technological theories and developments.

Spin is narrated by Tyler Dupree, and it is mainly concerned with Tyler and his relationship with a pair of twins, Jason and Diane. And, although this is a longish book (364 pages), Wilson limits his focus largely to these three and their families and friends. Smart move, and a sign that the author knows what he is about.

The book begins roughly twenty years into the future. One night, Tyler and his two friends are looking at the sky -- and the stars go out. In due course, it emerges that the earth has been covered by a kind of protective blanket, put there (the earth scientists deduce) by some alien power.

The real sun is replaced by an artificial sun, and life goes on. But gradually, scientists discover that time outside the earth's protective blanket is passing immensely faster than it is beneath it. In particular, the sun is aging, in terms of earth time, at massive rate. The scientists calculate that, in some forty years' time, the sun will die.

All of this is conveyed to the reader far more convincingly than it can be in a brief summary. But while that particular part of the plot is interesting in itself, it is not the author's main concern.

His main concern -- and I hesitate to say this, in case it puts some readers off -- is the love story between Tyler Dupree and the female twin, Diane. In fact, what we have here -- and again I risk putting you off completely -- is a classic romance. Boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back again.

Although I have read a fair amount of science fiction, I cannot claim to be an expert on it. But I would be surprised if anyone told me that there is a science-fiction writer around who handles people better than Wilson. Certainly I have not come across anyone. What we have here is a classy mainstream novel (I wouldn't insult it by calling it literary), set within an entirely convincing science-fiction framework. This is an unusual combination, and one which deserves the highest praise.

There are passages in this book where the author achieves that hypnotic effect on the reader which comes about when a writer knows precisely what he wants to do, and has both the literary technique and the psychological insight to achieve it.

This is, in short, the novel that Michael Cunningham might have written if only he knew any science, and if he had a better understanding of human nature. And for once it would have deserved its accolades and million-copy sale.

Unfortunately, a search of the database on Publishers Marketplace reveals that, while Cunningham has pulled down 26 reviews in major US newspapers, there are none listed (so far) for Spin.

I did, however, find one review in the Washington Post, where Paul di Fillipo says that the book may be, at last, an example of 'the long-anticipated marriage between the hard sf novel and the literary novel, resulting in an offspring possessing the robust ideational vigor of the former with the graceful narrative subtleties of the latter.... Neither the culture of art nor the culture of science is slighted. And isn't that the ideal definition of science fiction?'

Well, it's one such anyway.

Spin is highly recommended to anyone who likes thoughtful, literate, intelligent fiction -- never mind the genre.

Another note about comments (and permissions)

I would like to repeat a note about comments that I made a few months ago.

Today I received notice of a comment from someone who wanted to circulate a couple of my posts to other people. Because of the way comments are set up -- see below -- I was unable to reply to this person.

The answer to the query, by the way, is yes, no problem. The GOB is published under a Creative Commons licence -- see the logo in the right-hand column, right at the bottom, for details. You are free to use the posts here for any non-commercial purpose, without contacting me, so long as you credit the source.

And here's a bit more about the peculiarities of the comments system.

This blog makes use of Blogger.com facilities, and I have tried to set the Blogger options so as to make it as easy as possible for people to post comments.

I would like you to be aware that the Blogger system is set up so that, whenever someone posts a comment, I get a copy of it by email. You can later delete your own comment from the blog, if you wish, and the public will not be able to read it, but I will still have had the email.

If you expect me to reply, or hope that I will, probably your best plan is to send an email to me direct, rather than post a comment. You can find my email address through my Blogger profile -- use the link at the top of the right-hand column on this page. I cannot send a reply to you if you simply post a comment -- in other words, although I get an email containing your comment, the 'reply' facility doesn't work because the system doesn't have your address.

The only exception (I am guessing here) is if you are already a registered Blogger.com user yourself; then the email containing your comment does seem to contain your email address for me to reply, if I want to.

Occasionally, if I feel it is sufficiently important, I have been able to trace an email address for a commenter via Google or some other device, but that is the long way round the houses; and it isn't always possible.

John Twelve Hawks: The Traveller

A trivial point first, I think. John Twelve Hawks's novel The Traveller is known as The Traveler in the US. Where, for reasons best known to themselves, they spell things differently.

I first heard of this book about three weeks ago when I read a review in The Times, or its Sunday sister. The review made it clear that The Traveller had been heavily hyped. Hmm, I thought. Just goes to show how remote (or 'off the grid' as Hawks would say) we are out here in darkest Wiltshire, because I had never heard of the book.

Anyway, I looked it up in the Wiltshire library catalogue -- and behold! They actually had a copy. Which is a novelty in itself, because (a) they often don't get copies of popular and/or much-reviewed books, and (b), when they do, the new titles take weeks or months to get catalogued. Once I got over my surprise, I put in a reservation and found that I was the book's first reader.

Well, perhaps I should say 'attempted reader', because having ploughed through a hundred pages I am going to give up. Sorry, but this just ain't for me.

John Twelve Hawks is, one assumes, a pseudonym. Rumours allege that he is a well known novelist who is moonlighting (I doubt it), or one who has failed under another name (much more likely), or that he is actually a collaboration (entirely possible, given the patchy and, to me, unsatisfactory nature of the prose). Anyway, JTH is a bit of a mystery man. The book's jacket says only that he 'lives off the grid', which presumably is intended to create an air of mystery. And he is said to communicate with his publisher only by untraceable satellite phone or through his lawyer. All cobblers, no doubt, but it helps to generate talk.

As for the book, what the hell is it? Well, I suppose it's a techno-thriller. A mixture of science fiction, fantasy, and thriller. Heavily influenced, I would guess, by movies such as The Matrix, and aimed at a similar audience.

The plot seems to boil down (and here I quote the flyleaf) to a life-and-death battle 'between those who wish to control history and those who will risk their lives for freedom and enlightenment.'

All of which is all very well, and not unattractive in its way, but the problem, for me, is that the book just doesn't work. The early chapters are not well handled from a technical point of view. The viewpoint is not clear, and there is too much stodgy information conveyed to the reader directly by the author, rather than being passed on painlessly in the course of interesting action. Most of this background information could, I suspect, have been kept until later in the book.

Chapter 3, my notes say, is much better, and Chapter 6 is quite well written. But I still wasn't at all interested in the characters. For a start there are too many of them, and none of them are very convincing.

One way or another, I found this book curiously adolescent. Which is not, in itself, off-putting -- I've read plenty of children's books in my time, and enjoyed them -- but I didn't have any real confidence that the author knew what he was doing.

From my point of view, the book is chiefly interesting as an example of what you can do by way of marketing hype if you take enough trouble and spend enough money. This book began, I presume, as a concept in the mind of an author. But it could just as easily have been a concept dreamed up by an agent or a publisher, who then put the package together.

Somewhere along the line the originating publisher, who seems to have been Doubleday in New York, was persuaded to put up some substantial capital. And, according to reports from those who know about such things, the marketing campaign was aimed not so much at the public as at the marketers. For instance, a number of ladies dressed up as one of the book's characters, Maya, were mixing with the crowds at BookExpo America.

You can find an account of the hype at Cross-Media Storytelling, together with links to various web sites and a blog which is (so to speak) written by one of the book's characters, Judith Strand.

All in all then, what we have here is a determined attempt to generate buzz and publicity in relatively new and innovative ways. And it seems to have worked.

Certainly the book is generating acres of newsprint and there are masses of links on the web. The book is also reported to be on various bestseller lists. The movie rights have been sold, and there will be two sequels to make up a trilogy.

The major newspapers, for reasons explained last week, have given the novel a reasonably warm reception, but you may find that some smaller reviewers may be more enlightening, e.g. Shots or Blogcritics.

Well, credit where credit is due, I suppose. The various editions of The Traveler or The Traveller are selling lots of copies. Which is the point of the exercise. Compared with that, the fact that the book isn't actually very good becomes almost irrelevant.

The writer's lot-tery

The Book Babes in the The Book Standard are usually worth reading, and this week they have a piece about the writer's lot-tery. Here they discuss what makes or breaks a book, the importance of a powerful agent, the fact that first novels seldom are, and all like that. Worth reading.

Among others, they quote Jim Lynch, whose first (published) novel is an autumn lead for Bloomsbury. He says this: 'When I finally came to peace with my novel-writing obsession was when I came to the conclusion that it is my job/goal to write a novel good enough to deserve getting on the publishing roulette wheel. That's really all a writer can do. The rest, to some degree, is up to timing, luck, connections etc. And if you start dwelling too much on what it takes to get published or reading too much into what gets published or what does well, I think it not only hurts your chances of writing something strong and original, but it also nudges you closer to the writers' ward of the nearest mental hospital.'

Well that's certainly true.

Free advice for (non-fiction) writers

Publishers Lunch pointed me to a blog post by Seth Godin, in which he gives his five big ideas about publishing.

Is this of interest? I suggest that it is. Seth Godin is the author of several big-selling books on marketing and on the transformation of business firms into commercial superstars. He is also the author of Unleashing the Ideavirus, which was apparently the biggest selling ebook of all time (so far). So perhaps he has something useful to offer.

Seth's comments apply chiefly to those who write and seek to publish non-fiction books, but to me they also sound pretty relevant to fiction writers. You need to read the whole piece to get the full benefit, but here are Seth's five basic principles, with a few added comments from me, in brackets:

1. Please understand that book publishing is an organised hobby, not a business. If you're doing it for the money you're going to be disappointed. (This definition of publishing is probably the best I have ever come across.)

2. The timeframe for the launch of books has gone from silly to unrealistic. Even today, it still takes at least a year to get the damn thing into print. (Or even longer.)

3. There is no such thing as effective book promotion by a book publisher. (This is not quite 100% true, but Seth estimates that in America perhaps 100 books a year get properly promoted. That's out of what he says is 75,000 books published each year, but I seem to remember that the true figure in the US market is nearer 175,000.)

4. Books cost money and require the user to read them for the idea to spread. And the snag is, people don't like to pay and many of them don't like to read.

5. Publishing is like venture capital, not like printing. (What Seth seems to mean here is that getting a book printed to a professional standard is the easy part. Selling the thing and making it work for you are altogether different matters.)

In general, Seth seems to take the view that books are mainly useful for spreading the news about how wonderfully expert you are in your area of expertise; they thus generate income in ways other than through royalties. But there may be, Seth suggests, quicker, simpler and more effective ways of spreading your name around the world than going to all the trouble of writing a book.

Hey, you know what? You could write a blog. Doesn't take more than about three hours a day.

More thoughts on Empress Bianca

Early last Friday morning (29 July), when I was not as awake as perhaps I should have been, I wrote about the difficulties being experienced in relation to Lady Colin Campbell's new novel, Empress Bianca. The statements that I made in that post require, I think, a little further elaboration.

But first, a brief recapitulation. Empress Bianca was published in March this year, in the UK, by a small English firm called Arcadia Books. Soon after it appeared, a wealthy individual named Lily Safra claimed that the principal character in the novel was based on her, and she therefore threatened to sue for libel. Mrs Safra, by the way, is said to be the richest widow in the world.

As I understand it, anyone suing for libel is essentially claiming that they have been defamed. And the classic definition of defamation is the following: 'A statement concerning any person which exposes him (or her) to hatred, ridicule or contempt or which causes him to be shunned or avoided or which has a tendency to injure him in his office profession or trade.'

Arcadia Books evidently decided that, regardless of the rights and wrongs of this matter, it was too expensive for them to defend themselves against Mrs Safra in the law courts. So they withdrew all copies of the book and have undertaken to have them destroyed.

Lady Colin Campbell, however, took a dim view of the Safra allegation, and has threatened to sue Mrs Safra in return. You can read a full(ish) account of the whole matter in the Independent.

This case nicely illustrates some of the dangers and problems relating to the law of libel in England. And those of you who at this point decide that you need read no further, because you live in the USA or wherever, should think again. For two reasons.

First, you will undoubtedly have libel laws of your own to contend with; and, second, it is far from unknown for the authors of books published in, say, the USA, to be sued for libel in the English courts. Even if the book has never formally been published in England.

If someone wants to make trouble for an author, because of real or imagined damage to their reputation created through the publication of a book, all they have to do, to sue in England, is prove that one copy of the book has been sold here; e.g. through Amazon. This is not difficult to do. And there are good reasons for aggrieved parties to sue here rather than in, say, the American courts, because English libel law is much more favourable to the complaining party (the plaintiff) than are the laws in many other parts of the world. Hence the phenomenon known as 'libel tourism'.

Back to Empress Bianca and the arising issues.

To remind myself of the key points of law, I turned to what is, in my opinion, the best book on libel for the lay reader in England: Reputations Under Fire, by David Hooper. This is both an entertaining read (provided, of course, you have never been involved in a libel action yourself) and a source of much useful information.

On pages 422-437, Hooper provides a valuable discussion of 'libel in the world of make believe' -- i.e. in fiction.

First of all, what is Lily Safra complaining about? Well, she says that 'friends' have pointed out to her that there are remarkable similarities between the lead character of Empress Bianca and herself. The character, as portrayed in the book, is a ruthless person who murders two of her four husbands. Mrs Safra therefore alleges (I presume) that she has been defamed.

Have your friends ever pointed out to you that a character in a book bears an uncanny resemblance to yourself? No, me neither. But you will find, in these cases, that the person complaining always has lots of attentive friends who are assiduous in scanning the bookshelves for volumes which traduce the innocent.

The publishers deny that Mrs Safra has been defamed. However, Gary Pulsifer, the managing director, says 'We're too small to fight something like this', and he seems to have agreed to more or less everything demanded by the Safra lawyer (who, incidentally, once negotiated Princess Diana's divorce from Prince Charles).

Why would Arcadia do this, if they believe that the book is not truly defamatory?

Because fighting such cases is notoriously expensive and also difficult. English law very much favours the plaintiff (i.e. the person who claims to have been defamed).

David Hooper tells us that the law makes an 'initial assumption in favour of the plaintiff that defamatory words are false and that he or she is of good reputation. Equally helpful to the plaintiff is the fact that he or she does not have to prove actual damage as a result of the libel.'

The traditional defence in libel cases is to assert that what has been published is true, and then prove it. This is the reverse of what common sense would suggest. You might think that the plaintiff ought to have to prove that she has suffered damage; but she doesn't. And, furthermore, if your defence is that the words complained of are true, you may be in difficulty. Witnesses may be reluctant to come forward and testify that a man is a serial murderer, for obvious reasons.

And if the book in question is a novel, which is supposed to be an invented work of fiction from start to finish, then proving that the allegations are true is scarcely an option.

In short, if someone chooses to allege that you, the novelist, have written about them in a defamatory way, then you have got a big problem.

What can you do to prevent this happening?

Most of the cases that are brought are based on novels which use the same name for a character as that of a real person. So if, for instance, you write about a mass murderer, by the name of Manfred Blennerhassett, who is (you say) a retired Colonel, and you describe him as living in Argyle Street, Wimbledon, then you had better take very good care care to make a number of checks.

First, do a Google check to make sure that there is no real-life person of that name who has been convicted of anything (preferably), and certainly not of murder.

Next, check the Army list to make sure that there is not a real-life retired Colonel (or anything else) with the name that you have selected. (And by the way, it is often thought best to choose very common names, rather than unusual ones, for bad guys.)

Third, make sure that there is no Argyle Street in Wimbledon, or anywhere nearby for that matter.

And, finally, keep notes about these things: how you selected the name, what checks you made, et cetera. In 1974, the author Tom Sharpe chose an outlandish name for a character who was a portrayed as a television presenter in Porterhouse Blue. Tom Sharpe assumed that the name was sufficiently absurd for it not to exist in real life. But behold, out of the bowels of the BBC there crept an individual with that very same name.

Sharpe was advised that, since he had kept no notes of checking the BBC staff directory (for instance), he had no defence. The plaintiff was paid £250. This was scarcely enough to bankrupt Mr Sharpe, but the episode no doubt caused him worry and expense.

Frankly, any author who fails to check the relevant professional directories for characters who are military officers, clergymen, doctors, and so forth, is just asking for trouble. And, since all these professional persons seem to have legions of friends who will swear that, when they read your book, they immediately viewed it as a vile slur upon the character of a noble doctor, admiral, or whatever, trouble you will assuredly get.

I once had a book published by a man who told me that one of his authors had named all his characters after people living in his village. This is not a good plan, and the book had to be pulped. As did Piers Paul Read's novel Polonaise, when he referred to a certain Lord Derwent, without bothering to check whether there actually was a peer of that name and whether he had a sense of proportion about these things.

By now you may be wondering if there is anything else that you can do to avoid being sued for libel. Yes, there is, and the advice comes from Peter Carter-Ruck, who was the most famous libel lawyer of them all.

To be certain that you will never be liable to pay damages for libel, you should 'refrain from writing, printing or publishing or distributing any written matter of whatsoever nature.' So that's easy enough, isn't it?

But what of Lady Colin Campbell's threat that if Mrs Safra doesn't shut up and go away, she will sue her in return? Now that would be really interesting. And it would constitute, so far as I know, a first.

Presumably -- and I am groping in the dark here -- presumably Lady Colin would claim that, when Mrs Safra alleged that she (Lady C) she had used her (Mrs Safra) as the basis for a character in a novel, she (Mrs S) had libelled Lady C. Lady C would claim, in short, that she (Lady C) had been defamed.

It seems to me, speaking purely as a layman, that Lady C would have a pretty good case. As we have seen, Lady C, in counter-suing, would not even be required to prove actual damage. And it would, presumably, be up to Mrs Safra to prove that her original allegation was true. She would have to prove that Lady C had, deliberately and knowingly, based the character in her book on Mrs Safra, in order to expose Mrs S to hatred, ridicule and contempt, et cetera.

That, I suggest, would be mighty difficult. And that is the point which I was trying to make last Friday morning; though I did so too briefly and somewhat clumsily. I hope today's effort is clearer.

For more on libel (if you can bear it) see my post of July last year about the memoirs of Peter Carter-Ruck.

An apt description

Today's Times prints a letter from Terry Maher, chairman of Maher Booksellers Ltd. In it, he discusses the discounting of the latest instalment in the Harry Potter saga.

What has happened, as you are doubtless aware, is that almost no bookshop on the entire planet has sold the new Harry Potter book at the price 'fixed' or suggested by the publisher. Instead, everyone and his brother have been selling it at a massive discount.

In the UK the nominal price is £16.99, but Amazon, for instance, offer it at £8.99.

Maher describes this process as 'a form of commercial suicide.' And of course he is dead right. That's exactly what it is. It is also a form of lunacy.

Maher expresses the hope that this mistake will not be repeated. But it's exactly what happened with HP5 (and the others, once they became famous), so why on earth should the next, and last, one be any different?

And when, one might ask, was the book trade ever a sensible business to be in, from a commercial point of view? Businessmen with experience in other markets, who blunder briefly into publishing and bookselling, soon realise what a nonsense it is and retire hastily.

Luke Johnson, for instance currently Chairman of UK Channel 4 TV, once owned a book publisher and found it ‘a painful experience.’ Generally, he said, publishing is a ‘terrible business… a barely rational industry.’ The cash-flow characteristics are unattractive. ‘You ship finished volumes to booksellers who only accept them on a sale or return basis, and demand at least 55 per cent trade discount, and pay 120 days later.’

In the circumstances, to describe the HP discounting as a form of commercial suicide seems quite restrained.