Scottish crime novelist Quintin Jardine says he owes his career to a bad
TV novelization that he read…
I didn’t like anything about the book: the characters didn’t work on the page
as they had on screen; the plot seemed ropey; and the ending, when I got there,
struck me as contrived.When I was done, I chucked it across the terrace, remarking aloud, "I could
do better myself." To this my wife replied, "Time you did, then." Coming from
her, that was an instruction.
This is exactly how my wife Margaret came to write her own Avengers novel, except it was I who threw down the gauntlet. Alas, there was no market for another Avengers tie-in at that time, and so her book has come to be described as “fanfic”. This was because after she came to realize that the book would never be commercially published, she decided to make it available on line so that other Avengers fans could see how it should be done. There is a copyright notice for the book, with the disclaimer that it is not being made available for any profit, and that the copyright holders of the Avengers have sole rights to the characters contained therein.
Now, I know how Lee feels about fanfic, and I’m not trying to ignite any debate over its merits or complete lack thereof. But many a person has been motivated to write themselves by disappointment over something that should have been much better.
The book is “The Justice Game” by Peter Turnbull, based on a screenplay by John Brown. The irony is that Turnbull, like Jardine, writes police procedurals. The other irony is that Jardine’s books suck (at least the two I read) so “Justice Game” must have been really, really, horrible.