Impeccable Sources

David Brewerton

• 

Lovereading Price £7.99

RRP: £7.99

Download Extract Buy Now

Why I wrote this book

Excepting natural disasters and war, there is almost nothing the world needs less than any more novels. So why, oh why, did I choose to add my own tiny needle to the giant haystack of literature, hoping it might be found? 'Impeccable Sources', my first official work of fiction (I am a journalist by trade so no novice when it comes to embellishing the facts) tested my resolve, my skill, my imagination and my patience, but in the end I got there. In the end, there is a book. I can pick it up. It has a plot, characters, a beginning, a middle and an end. It has covers, an ISBN number and my name on the spine. It has been well reviewed in the few places it was reviewed. And it has sold a few hundred copies without any appreciable marketing. And the extraordinary thing is, having put all that into the learning curve that is any first novel, I am well into writing the next one. Here again, I am flirting with a true story but changing everything about it. The plot involves a complex mystery and is set on my beloved East Coast of England. But to return to Impeccable Sources, like most first timers I chose to write about the world I know, national newspapers. I wanted to show why it is that stories come out the way they do. How reporters are obliged to present speculation as fact, conjecture as evidence and assumptions as givens. I wanted to expose the casual cruelty and ambition that reside in any newsroom of any newspaper. In the process, I created a character in Cassandra Brown, reporter, who has a long career ahead of her at the Post, should anyone want to read more of her adventures. So I am waiting for the right agent to knock on my email demanding that my one-off be extended into a series. If it happens, I am ready. But if it doesn’t, I will nonetheless carry on writing, exploring ideas, motives, loyalties and relationships, regardless of whether the world actually needs any more books.

Synopsis

Cassandra Brown is determined to make it as a top-notch newspaper reporter, but after two years in London she has failed to get even one story on to the Posts' front page. But when a millionaire friend of the Prime Minister goes missing in mysterious circumstances, she seizes the chance to make the story hers, whatever the cost. Day by day she writes revealing stories about the missing tycoon - his affairs, his finances, his health - and the secrets that even his wife did not know. There seem to be good reasons why he might have wanted to disappear. Or have been kidnapped. Or worse.Then, two weeks after he walked out of his hotel, his battered body is found floating in the Mediterranean Sea. But did he fall, did he jump or was he pushed? Driven by competition from other papers, Brown's demanding News Editor insists she comes up with a new angle every day. The more she digs into his life, the more convinced she becomes of foul play. But she also discovers that even her most impeccable sources have their own agendas, their own axes to grind, and that it's not only her own ambition that knows no limits.

Reviews

Amazon review by H. M. Adeney: "David Brewerton's first novel keeps you wanting to know more as he tracks the quest of a young Fleet St reporter to invetigate a mysterious disappearance in the face of official disinterest, spin-doctor misinformation and decidely malevolent suggestion from his old business colleagues. Along the way he conjures up an all too authentic picture of the competitiveness and casual cruelty , not to mention the sheer grungy tackiness, of newspaper newsrooms.His characters -the louche news editor, the eternally absent big-name columnist,and the bumbling but insightful old reporter destined always to be passed over remain familiar however much the technology changes. Each chapter leaves you wanting to know more until the final sobering denouement. If there is a criticism, in this age of instant electronics, would his heroine be left to get on with the story so much on her own?"

---

Are you...

• A published author
• An author yet to be published
• Someone who loves reading