Taking publicity a bit far?

One of my favourite authors, Peter James, who used to write supernatural thrillers, has created a character called Superintendant Roy Grace of the Sussex Police - soon(ish) to be a TV series.

His latest novel, Dead Man's Grip, came out a couple of weeks ago, and went straight to the top of the bestsellers list, ahead of Jeffery Deaver's James Bond offering. It is about a hit-and-run accident in which a cyclist dies, who happens to be an American student whose mother is "connected", and wants those involved in the accident to die painfully. She hires a hit-man to take care of it. The hit-and-run driver was in a white van.

Peter James has a website http://blog.peterjames.com/ where he gave a link to his extremely elaborate publicity stunt:



Apparently something went wrong, but luckily it wasn't fatal!

Maybe if USA tried some extreme publicity like this, they wouldn't have felt the need to give our detectives the chop. At any rate, I can thoroughly recommend any and all of Peter's books. I wish Vincent was the right age and nationality to play Roy Grace...