It's been over a decade since Robert Pendleton published his brilliant short-story debut, and his hopes for a dazzling literary career have faded. Barely hanging on to his tenure in literature at Bannockburn College, Pendleton feels his simmering despair boil over with the arrival on campus of his one-time friend, now nemesis, the bestselling author and king of the coffee-table book, Allen Horowitz.For Pendleton, death seems to be the only remaining option, but his suicide attempt fails, halted at the last moment by the intervention of Adi Wiltshire, a graduate student battling her own demons of failure and thwarted ambition. During Pendleton's long convalescence, Adi discovers a novel hidden in his basement: a brilliant quasi-autobiographical story with a gruesome child-murder at its core.The publication of Scream causes a storm of publicity: a whirlwind into which Adi, Horowitz and the still-incapacitated Pendleton are thrust. The novel is treated as an existential masterpiece and looks set to bring its author the success he's always sought - when, ironically, he is no longer in a condition to appreciate it - until questions begin to be asked about its content: in particular about the uncanny resemblance between Pendleton's fictional crime and a real-life, unsolved local murder. Read Less