Artistic licence: No bar to literary success

The truck shuddered to a halt, and the bound and gagged teenage girl was hauled from the boot and dumped on the dirt road before it drove off.

It proved traumatic for the girl - not her ‘kidnapping’, but the fact that nobody bothered emerging from the isolated compound to rescue her. She lay there until a passing local untied her, shaking his head with wry amusement.

‘‘You think you’re the first to ...