Literary Career

My career as a novelist is a long way behind me (well, more accurately its at the bottom of the page here), its been donkeys years since I could come up with even a self-judged compelling piece of fiction. My imagination has been crushed by the other sides of my personality.

When I was a teenager I used to write and write and write. All of it tosh of course, but still I enjoyed writing, now I just can't.

The last compelling idea thing I came up with was to be a murder detective story set in Iraq at the time of the last American invasion, the hook being that that even in times of war when life is cheap and human rights are dogged, murder is still murder. Some young woman is shot and killed and a hard-nosed, slightly over-weight Iraqi detective tries his damnedest to bring the killer to justice.

Ever step along the way witnesses are killed during the invasion, evidence bombed, and at the same time the detective manages to get closer to the killer. Some kind of crime of passion, the woman was having an affair or some porterty deal or business conspiracy gone wrong. And even when the detective's police station is destroyed and the rest of law and order has fallen away, he still stays on the trail.

Until the final scene when political/war events overrun the story and the detective is killed, and the original killer never found.

It was to be a poignant story, you see everything slowly falling apart, but the detective's instinctive belief in natural justice the only thing he has to hang on to, and even that it's not enough.

I'd get Hal Hartley to direct the film version.

Anyhoo, I'll never get round to writing that book, but what made me think of it is the young lady shot in the protests in Iran, Neda Soltani.

At 19:05 June 20th Place: Karegar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart. I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim’s chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St. The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me. Please let the world know."

WHO KILLED NEDA SOLTANI?