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FINAL DEMAND (Vintage £6.99)
This novel was prompted by a newspaper story I read,
about a young woman who was charged with fraud. She worked
at the British Telecom payments processing centre at Durham,
and when cheques arrived written to “BT” (rather
than the full name) she changed them to “B.Taylor”
and her friend Barry and herself paid them into their own
account. This struck me as a simple little scam, and rather
brilliant.And there was something about it that stuck in
my mind. I kept asking myself the novelist’s question “What
if?” What if a payment doesn’t get processed?
The customer gets a final demand and in the end their phone
is cut off. And if a phone gets cut off, what then? All sorts
of life-changing things can happen. So I developed this
into
a story that starts out as a simple little fraud and that
suddenly gets darker when, as a result of a phone line
being
disconnected, a terrible tragedy happens. This novel is really
about guilt and responsibility, how there is no such thing
as a victimless crime. I also scripted it as a drama for
the BBC, starring Tamsin Outhwaite. She brought a terrific
minx-like
ammorality to the part of Natalie, our anti-heroine; but
she also brought a humanity to her, so we were on her side.
For Natalie
truly believed she was doing nothing wrong, until she was
faced with the devastating result of her greed.
Natalie is a girl who should be going somewhere. Beautiful,
bright and ambitious, she’s stuck in a dead-end job
in the accounts department of Nu-Line Telecommunications.
Living her life through wild weekends, yearning for something
more. When she sees a chance to change her life, she takes
it. After all, it’s only a minor crime. Nobody’s
going to get hurt. But other people do get hurt, because Natalie’s
actions do have consequences – tragic consequences that
result in lives being terribly and irrecovably changed.
“Thank God for Deborah Moggach. Final Demand is strong
on narrative, dashing the reader along but, though fast-paced
and transparently written, nevertheless creates people of
memorable complexity.”
(Independent)
“A cracker. Take the phone off the hook, curl up on
the sofa and enjoy.”
(Womans Journal)
"An astonishing story of broken dreams, greed and human
frailty...a tale of extraordinary power. Quite simply outstanding."
(Daily Mail)
"Hugely entertaining...immensely thought-provoking."
(Daily Express)
240 pages (2 May, 2002)
Publisher: Vintage; ISBN: 0099421933
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