MIlton Keynes Citizen journalist Sally Murrer is to be publish a novel written before her now infamous ordeal at the hands of Thames Valley Police.
The novel was on her laptop when she was arrested in connection with a leak inquiry in 2007.
Murrer was locked up for 30 hours, stripped searched and threatened with life imprisonment by police officers. She maintained that she had done nothing except have off-the-record conversations with police officers. All charges against her were dropped, although Thames Valley Police has refused to apologise.
When police arrested Murrer, they seized her mobile phone, notebooks and a laptop which carried the first draft of her novel – According to Bella.
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She tells Jon Slattery (on his blog): “Because the main characters were a local newspaper journalist and a detective sergeant, bearing a striking similarity to my co-defendant Mark Kearney, they assumed it was evidence. Thus we assume Thames Valley police had to plough through all 94,000 words of it. Perhaps I ought to ask them to do a review.
“In fact, the book was utter fiction and ironically the whole theme revolves around the police sergeant refusing to tell the poor journalist anything at all.”
The manuscript was in limbo on her computer in police custody for 19 months.
According to Bella is available from Book Guild Publishing, price £6.99.
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