onegoodmove

I've never cared much for Jeffrey Archer's writing. I did enjoy a short story he wrote about chess though that is hardly a recommendation for his usual fare. I think it true that all things being equal those authors who have experienced adversity have the raw material for some great stories. Jeffrey's encounter with the legal system, his overall nastiness, and his rudimentary skills as a writer could serve him well in the future. Revenge springs from strong emotions, and it looks like Mr. Archer is ready to unleash a bit of his own. He's taking them all to court, but he could get back less expensively using a time honored method as this article from the Guardian makes clear. What do you think? Is the pen mightier than the court.

Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare, that is. Having paid his debt to society, his enemies will now pay theirs - to him. It's whips and scorpions time at Grantchester. According to the newspapers, Jailbird Jeff has a war chest and a war plan. He will drag his enemies expensively through the courts, as Mary did the luckless Jane Williams, beggaring them in the process. Others will be slimed. His sleuths, one gathers, are digging.

From ermine to rags for Baroness Nicholson and Judge Potts. Angela Peppiatt has less far to fall, but fall she will, if the Archers have their way. Doubtless the list is much longer. There are so many enemies of Archer.

He could get his own back less expensively. All novelists have a knife in their hand. Many have used it to settle old scores. In 1984 pint-sized Dustin Hoffman gave Elmore Leonard the runaround in Hollywood. Big mistake. Payback came with the depiction of Martin Weir in Leonard's novel Get Shorty. Weir, the short-ass of the title, is full of Hoffmanesque thespian crap ("I need to get to the stem of this character"). Danny DeVito (whose arse is even closer to the ground than Dustin's) camped up the joke in the film version...