Picture the scene. A lay-by deep in the Dutch countryside, dead of night. A lorry sits in the darkness, driver snoring in the cab, trailer packed with thousands of copies of the most explosive royal book in a generation, their contents hidden under black plastic wrap (a level of tradecraft normally associated with shipments of cocaine). Somewhere out there in the gloom, a crack team of international literary criminals is closing in on their target: Earl Spencer’s Swan Song: Diana, My Sister.
By morning, the raiders had made off with four copies.
Not four pallets. Not four boxes. Four books.
Such is the sensational tale the Daily Mail “can reveal” this week. The truck, en route from a printing plant in central Europe to a distribution warehouse in the Netherlands, was broken into on Monday night; the driver discovered the raid at around 8am; Penguin bosses in London were informed at 3.30pm (did the news travel from Holland by barge?)
Dutch police are investigating the most sinsiter case to hit the flatlands since the heyday of Van der Valk.