Fidelma Cook

INOW know the best way for foiling a man who’s attacking you. It’s the head-butt. The bony protuberance of the forehead smashed hard down; and ideally into the nose which erupts easily. It nearly always comes as a surprise as most assailants are expecting a fist.

Or course it helps to be strong and fast, so I’d be better to stick to a gun – straight aim into the head or heart.

Fortunately, it’s very unlikely I’ll be using either method – but I know many other ways to disable an attacker.

I even know the spread of bullets for various pistols and rifles and what’s right in certain situations and what’s not, so as not to harm the innocent passer-by.

It’s not a new hobby (not that I’ve ever had a hobby) I’ve taken up to while away the silent hours.

Let’s face it, tales of murder and torture are not conducive to calm contemplation when frightened and alone.

No, I have no choice. Deb has kindly lent me an old Kindle already stacked with books. Deb is slightly, totally, obsessed with thrillers, as her choice after choice proves.

I don’t think I’ve ever ordered a thriller in my life – never, ever appealed. But beggars can’t be choosers and I’m desperately grateful for reading material of any kind, however monotonous.

And it’s the first time I’ve used a Kindle. I’ve been a dreadful snob about them. I couldn’t understand how anyone could choose to download books.

Books are a joy from opening the packaging, stacking them into piles to read, to be touched, to be stroked for their pristine perfection. Then to be placed alongside many others – some titles facing outwards, a blaze of colour and beauty.

I can sit and let my eyes wander the thousands of books that fill my rooms and rest my eyes lovingly on each one. The range is eclectic although I have certain favourite authors.

Some are very high-brow – some are simply fast, enjoyable blockbusters. I’m not totally snobbish about my collection but I enjoyed turning the more fascinating ones face on to be admired.

So how could Kindle ever fill my needs? But in these dire straits it has – sort of – although I am going through the books at an astonishing rate.

Some of them have whole chunks missing because it’s so sensitive, and zooming to a fresh chapter I then can’t find my way back as my fingers do their shaky dance.

Admittedly, the murder, the darkness is getting me a bit down, but not as much as when I began.

In fact, I’m developing quite a fascination with the various methods of killing, wrecking cars, people’s perversions that lead them into these situations.

And, as lots of the books bring in many of the governmental changes already operating and those sinister ones to come, the sense of an ever-growing authoritarian power terrifies me.

We are sleepwalking into total control aided by big business, certain media and politicians of all colours.

There is no Opposition anymore – they all lie in the same bed and mouth platitudes such as “for the good of the country”, “antiterrorism”, “safety of the public”.

This from a nation that by its actions abroad has left the UK open to unprecedented terrorism and revenge attacks. Our secret services have tricks as dirty and despicable as any suspect country. God knows the full truth about what is being hidden and will be hidden. How many men and women have been quietly dispatched or are kept in secret cells?

Far-fetched? Fantasy? Wake-up – it is no longer possible to believe in honourable members, decency, fair play, when people can be denied access to a lawyer, be incarcerated without charge, deported without due process, picked up by police for simply demonstrating peacefully – all under the eyes of unprecedented surveillance.

Ideals and principles don’t come into this. Smell the money. We live in a greedy, grasping world where the rich want more and there’s never a limit on how much or how it is obtained.

The biggest tragedy is how few of us seem to care. Slunk in apathy, as long as our needs are met, our comforts preserved and we retain this naïve belief in the ultimate good of those who are rapidly becoming our rulers, not our elected representatives.

So how does this all fit into the thriller genre? Well, I’m discovering that the best are gently subversive, introducing what we turn a blind eye to in a clever, non-preachy way.

No doubt the more overt will find themselves censored bit by bit.

And I’m no longer snobbish about either Kindle or thriller.

My eyes were already opened but now my flesh creeps at all we don’t know or accept.

It’s not fiction, this is life now.

And if you need any tips to beat the hell out of someone and not damage yourself – I’m your woman.

I’m an expert now.