Anatomy of a scandal/Sarah Vaughan

I am reading Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan, a political thriller shortly to be dramatised on Netflix.

It is not very good.

Firstly the characters are flimsily based upon Boris Johnson/David Cameron (Oxford ex-Eton toffs) and a Conservative sex scandal – all familiar territory to former Guardian political journalist Sarah Hall who has been writing fiction under her Sarah Vaughan pseudonym since 2014.

So she does not have too many demands on creating fiction.

We have also long flashbacks to a Liverpool student in Oxford out of her social and sexual depth (Sarah Hall?).

No doubt a publisher, mindful of both Sally Rooney writing a book based on an affair at Trinity Dublin and Netflix now looking for a successor to the Hugh Grant/Nicole Kidman drama The Undoing (it had the same director) were enthusiastic, even if I was not.

The weaknesses are all the more apparent as I have just finished Graham Greene’s End of the Affair.  

Apart from the quality of writing and perception, Greene has one other quality which Vaughan does not possess – humour.

Reading this novel I found myself inspired to write my own.

It’s the story of Jed Carr, leader of the Labour party who holds extreme hard left views and wins the 2019 Election over his toff Tory opponent.

The cost of re-nationalising the privatised industries and giving in to every wage demand then rapidly melts down the economy.

However, encouraged by his anti-NATO sentiments, Uncle Vlad bails him out.

Great Britain supplies no weaponry to Ukraine so invading the country becomes much easier.

By then Carr is summoned to Moscow, dies mysteriously of an undiagnosed stomach ailment and is replaced by Dotty Bishop.

The journalist who investigates the funding of her £2m house in North London disappears.

Great Britain becomes a valued ally of Russia and satellite state.

Every successive Tory leader is forced to resign after embarrassing stories from the red tops of sexual waywardness with prostitutes fuelled by an excited social media, both emanating from the Kremlin.