The case of a reader attacking a crime writer at a book signing is just the latest in a string of incidents that could be out of a Stephen King novel
Ink assault … Val McDermid was attacked after she signed a copy of her book about female detectives. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian
The peculiar ritual of the book signing – where authors surface into the public realm at a pre-announced time and venue, where the barrier of the page is briefly removed to allow writer/reader contact to become face-to-face – has plenty of potential for humiliation. Janice Galloway, for example, has written of someone who queued for over an hour to tell her that "he hated my stuff and … my fucking earrings as well". But the experience rarely gets as nasty as it did for Val McDermid at Sunderland University last December.
Disguised by a blond wig, trilby and glasses, Sandra Botham queued up after McDermid's talk, asked her to sign a copy of her 1994 non-fiction book about female PIs, A Suitable Job for a Woman, and dedicate it to "Michelin Man San", and then threw ink all over her. Botham had apparently held a grudge against McDermid for almost 20 years, having interpreted a passage in the book as a derogatory reference to her. She was convicted this week of common assault.
Another leading crime writer, Peter James, talked last year of a 10-year campaign by a stalker who appeared at his events around the UK. Between them, she sent lengthy emails "several times a day": one attached "a photograph of her Peter James shrine … flanked by candles, burning", while another (after he went blank when she turned up at a signing) was "a 10,000-word email beginning 'I've been your No 1 fan for years, I can't believe you don't remember my name'".
Other obsessives have confined themselves to emails or letters. Paul Lomax, who was convinced he and JK Rowling had met on a train before she wrote the Harry Potter books and had a special connection, was banned from contacting her in 2007 after bombarding her with letters, culminating in a death threat comparing her to the murdered playwright Joe Orton.
In the same year, Patricia Cornwell went to court to seek an injunction against her "cyberstalker", a writer called Leslie Sachs who had accused her online, inter alia, of plagiarism and antisemitism. More recently, James Lasdun devoted a book, Give Me Everything You Have, to being cyberstalked by someone he'd taught.
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Disguised by a blond wig, trilby and glasses, Sandra Botham queued up after McDermid's talk, asked her to sign a copy of her 1994 non-fiction book about female PIs, A Suitable Job for a Woman, and dedicate it to "Michelin Man San", and then threw ink all over her. Botham had apparently held a grudge against McDermid for almost 20 years, having interpreted a passage in the book as a derogatory reference to her. She was convicted this week of common assault.
Another leading crime writer, Peter James, talked last year of a 10-year campaign by a stalker who appeared at his events around the UK. Between them, she sent lengthy emails "several times a day": one attached "a photograph of her Peter James shrine … flanked by candles, burning", while another (after he went blank when she turned up at a signing) was "a 10,000-word email beginning 'I've been your No 1 fan for years, I can't believe you don't remember my name'".
Other obsessives have confined themselves to emails or letters. Paul Lomax, who was convinced he and JK Rowling had met on a train before she wrote the Harry Potter books and had a special connection, was banned from contacting her in 2007 after bombarding her with letters, culminating in a death threat comparing her to the murdered playwright Joe Orton.
In the same year, Patricia Cornwell went to court to seek an injunction against her "cyberstalker", a writer called Leslie Sachs who had accused her online, inter alia, of plagiarism and antisemitism. More recently, James Lasdun devoted a book, Give Me Everything You Have, to being cyberstalked by someone he'd taught.
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