Richard Prescott "Officially Dead"
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Richard Prescott
Linda leant back in her chair and said calmly, ‘Colin, do you want to earn £10 000 for one evening's easy work?’
He laughed. 'I don’t buy lottery tickets,’ he said.
‘I’m serious, Colin,' Linda said. 'And I’m not talking about buying lottery tickets. I’m talking about £10 000 in cash. It's yours, if you want it.’
‘What’s going on?’ he said nervously. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘My husband is going to need an alibi,’ she said. ‘You can provide one for him. It's as simple as that.’
Colin Fenton and his wife run a computer software company, but only Colin knows that the business is £10,000 in debt. When a chance meeting in a pub leads him to an offer that will, he thinks, quickly and easily solve all his problems, he accepts. But he loses the gamble and subsequently his identity, leaving his wife to try to prove whether or not he is officially dead.
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Text Analysis: Unique words: about 2,200. Total words: about 22,200
Hard words: abandoned, accent, a chance to live an honest life, a hell of a lot of jewellery, appreciate, attack, attend an inquest, arranged a loan, alibi, attempted murder, boot, breakdown truck, break-in, be in touch, charged, car jack, claim, client loyalty, common, computer software, connect, confirmed, criminal record, contacts in the jewellery trade, cutting equipment, deal, discount, display cabinets, disturb, emergency services, exit, export regulations, fence, flirting, floppy disk, foot passenger, frost, funeral, fussy, getting to know each other, get down to business, get rid of, go out of business, identify the body, involved, insurance brokers, I’d better be going, junction, lay-by, lined with, mass, mates, main stock, licence, officially dead, out of control, Passport Authority, profits, picked one at random, plastic explosive, programmers, proposal, put the car into reverse, puzzled, raise that much cash, reaction, receipts, rented, risk, roadworks, security systems, small-time thieving, second year running, self control, service area, sideboard, sign a statement, sort out, steel shutter, suburbs, sympathize, taking aim, wallet, witnessed, Yellow Page
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