Here’s an odd, and somewhat troubling, story from my own state.

It seems a boy was killed in 1957 in what appeared to be a car accident. Years later, a priest investigated the matter and decided the boy had in fact been murdered. He wrote a book that claimed to prove his theory, substituting fictional names for the real characters he blamed for the death.

Problem was, it was set in such a small community that the fictionalized characters were easily identifiable.

So the people the characters were based on sued the priest. They have now won a settlement out of court.

I guess that without a judgment, this doesn’t create a legal precedent, but it’s bad news for authors. It should be noted that just changing a person’s name and giving him a different hair color doesn’t necessarily protect you from a libel suit.

I’ve never heard of this book. I doubt it was a bestseller, so there can’t have been a lot of royalty money in the pot. I suppose the priest’s order ended up paying the lion’s share of the settlement.

That must be frustrating. This time (for a change) the priest wasn’t even accused of the crime.