Strictly No Flowers

A writer attempts to find out the truth about a war crime and forgets the truth about himself. A witty and fast-moving thriller from the author of the Faraday and Winter novels

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?