Merry Christmas! By Gordon Frank Newman
Paperback published by Legend Press 29th October 2024
ISBN 9781917163606
Merry Christmas! A reimagined version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for the 21st Century. Eddie Scarr, a modern facsimile of Scrooge, is angrier and more damaged than the original, but just as successful in his own milieu. He’s a Department for Work and Pensions enforcement officer whose sole reason for existing, it seems, is to make life as difficult as possible for would-be benefit fraudsters, and everyone else who crosses his path. A workaholic, he is driven in pursuit of cheats, even on Christmas Eve, despite being wracked with a vicious head cold. As he makes his way home to his cold apartment and equally cold bed, he has an alarming encounter with a former clients, whom he had previously hounded to death. Even more alarming encounters await him when he logs on to his computer at home. But will any of these encounters change him for the better?
MY REVIEW
At Christmas time we all help each other in need, be kind to everyone, wishing friends, and work colleagues, a Merry Christmas, where everyone is in jolly good Christmas spirit, all looking forward to Christmas. For me Christmas time I always find more time to catch up with reading my to read pile. Merry Christmas by GF Newman novel really caught my attention to read earlier. I do have to admit I like reading a story when a character gets under my skin, when I roll my eyes saying to my self, “On no!” And character Eddie Scarr did exactly that to me. He is a modern day Scrooge! Eddie works in a Department for Work and Pensions, with being Christmas Eve he is working around the clock, finding benefit cheats, that are working and claiming benefits. Watch out!! he has a nose for working claimants. He’s smart where he visits market stall holders on the lookout for those who are working illegally and some people working who are claiming benefits. Far as Eddie Scarr is concerned Christmas time is the best time to catch people. Strike force officers, don’t support Eddie Scarr on his mission for his raid. The question is can’t Eddie stop? After all it’s Christmas.🎄 The reason I loved reading Merry Christmas, is because it is something so modern-up-to-date, and extremely unique. This story is a twenty-first-century reimagined version of Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Things haven’t really been rosey for Eddie, so this may bring a tear to your eye, as it will dig deeper inside Eddie Scarr’s life and upbringing. I highly recommend this clever well put together Christmas story.🌟✨🎄🎅
Gordon Frank Newman was born in Kent on 22 May 1946. He is fond of recounting a childhood story about the time when, walking home with his shirt stuffed with pears, he was cuffed round the ear by a policeman who accused him of stealing. The blow left Newman deaf in his right ear and perhaps sowed the seeds of a lifelong distrust of the police. Attending acting school at the age of 16 he learnt about Stanislavski, but really wanted to be a star. His first script was written, at the age of 18, for the ITV police series No Hiding Place (1959-67), and his first novel, Sir, You Bastard (1970) was published two years later, its title pronouncing a sceptical attitude to authority figures that has remained constant throughout his career. Double BAFTA winner GF Newman has written more than a dozen novels, as many television films, plus 27 feature-length teleplays including Judge John Deed, which he created and produced. His debut novel, Sir, You Bastard, was a cause célèbre; following his television debut with the mini-series, Law & Order, Members of Parliament called for his prosecution for sedition. He wrote and created BBC Radio 4’s longest running drama series, 58 plays from his novel, The Corrupted, a fictional ‘history’ of the crime-business-politics nexus from the 1950s to the bank crash of 2008.
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