"A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thump." That was the first line in my first book: The Pericles Commission.
When I wrote that line, I was thinking, what's the most ridiculous way to discover a body that anyone could imagine? What's something that couldn't possibly happen?
Well, now it's happened. Residents of Mortlake in London on the 8th September at 7.42am were surprised when a dead man fell from the sky, and landed in one of their residential streets with a resounding thump.
It seems the victim was a stowaway on a jet, who like others before him had decided to hide in the landing gear compartment. Mortlake is under the flightpath for Heathrow airport. When the landing wheels descended, out he came. He was probably already dead. Very few people can survive unprotected at 30,000 feet.
Here's the story from the BBC news. They still don't know who he was.
When I began this blog I was stuck for a title, so I used A dead man fell from the sky as a placeholder. I figured I'd change it later to something that looked more official.
But then when the series sold, and I revamped the web site and changed the name to The Athenian Mysteries, the one piece of clear feedback that came winging back to me was that everyone liked the original name! So A dead man fell from the sky I am, and shall remain. But this is a very weird example of life imitating art.
When I wrote that line, I was thinking, what's the most ridiculous way to discover a body that anyone could imagine? What's something that couldn't possibly happen?
Well, now it's happened. Residents of Mortlake in London on the 8th September at 7.42am were surprised when a dead man fell from the sky, and landed in one of their residential streets with a resounding thump.
It seems the victim was a stowaway on a jet, who like others before him had decided to hide in the landing gear compartment. Mortlake is under the flightpath for Heathrow airport. When the landing wheels descended, out he came. He was probably already dead. Very few people can survive unprotected at 30,000 feet.
Here's the story from the BBC news. They still don't know who he was.
When I began this blog I was stuck for a title, so I used A dead man fell from the sky as a placeholder. I figured I'd change it later to something that looked more official.
But then when the series sold, and I revamped the web site and changed the name to The Athenian Mysteries, the one piece of clear feedback that came winging back to me was that everyone liked the original name! So A dead man fell from the sky I am, and shall remain. But this is a very weird example of life imitating art.