Why I’m now scared of book clubs

‘Hi Ian!’ the email began. ‘We are a group of mostly females who meet regularly in London to review really good reads. We are currently reading The Dead Yard, and were wondering if you would like to join us as our honorary guest while we fire you (gently) with questions about your book.’ The email concluded: ‘You will be well fed and thoroughly entertained! Kind regards, Phoebe.’

Very nice, but I sensed a danger. My book on Jamaica, The Dead Yard, has earned me a lot of enemies. For good or ill, it exposes a dark side of island life at odds with the ‘paradise’ of travel brochures. Bookshops in Jamaica had declined to stock the book when it came out in 2011, owing to its alleged ‘sensitive content’. While I had not anticipated any legal problems (in fact, there were none), Jamaica has a long-entrenched culture of litigation. The island’s Libel and Slander Act of 1851 (amended by the Defamation Act of 1961) had been used in an attempt to prosecute me.

Since then, I have received a total of three death threats, as well as a slew of Amazon reviews so hysterical in tone (one by the British novelist Guy Kennaway) that Amazon was forced to take them down. And now this ‘mostly female’ book club. Was it a honey trap? In trepidation I accepted Phoebe’s invitation, and made my way by tube to Balham, as instructed. At the station I climbed the stairs to the exit, and waited. An elderly white woman on the pavement opposite was looking inquiringly up and down the street. ‘Are you Phoebe?’ I asked her. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I wish I was.’ Meaning? Minutes passed before my phone rang. ‘Hi Ian! I’m in the blue Audi to your left.’

Phoebe turned out to be a beautiful black woman in a leopard-print dress.