If Terrorists Read Thrillers ...

Maybe we should think ourselves lucky that terrorists do not spend all their time scanning the fiction shelves for ideas.

Peter Millar in The Sunday Times reflects on the often uncomfortable relationship between the real world and fiction, especially when the plots of thriller novels suddenly seem to predict real life atrocities.

Among his examples Stephen Leather's Soft Target which

detailed a plot by four British-born Muslims to explode bombs on the Underground

five months before the 7/7 suicide attacks on the London Tube, and the blockbuster climax of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series* which saw

... a crazed anti-American Japanese airline pilot crashing his 747 into the Capitol, killing the US President and half of Congress

well ahead of 9/11.

Not exactly a thriller but ... remember the uncanny timing of the launch of Chris Cleave's Incendiary?

Some other strange coincidences of this kind may have struck you too ...

Will The Book Bomb?

Talk about bad timing for a book launch!

According to The Guardian:

The bookselling giant Waterstone's yesterday pulled advertising for a new novel about suicide bombers creating mayhem in London.

The book, called Incendiary, was published on Thursday, the day all-too real bombs hit London.

The premise of the novel, set a few years in the future, is a suicide bomber attack on Arsenal's new stadium, a couple of miles from King's Cross.

Pictures promoting the novel show plumes of smoke curling above London's skyline. The wording reads "a massive terrorist attack ... launches this unique, twisted powerhouse of a novel".

First time author, Chris Cleave, must have though that fate had played a particularly nasty trick on him! Or will the coincidence boost sales?



Postscript:

The author shares his views on the timing of the book here. "... something yesterday taught me was the difference between imagination and experience" he says.