Merry Christmas! - GF Newman

Merry Christmas! is a moving, reimagined version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol for the 21st Century. If that master storyteller were around today, he would surely be entertained by this clever rendition.Eddie Scarr, a modern facsimile of Scrooge, is angrier and more damaged than the original, but just as successful in his own milieu. He’s a Department for Work and Pensions enforcement officer whose sole reason for existing, it seems, is to make life as difficult as possible for would-be benefit fraudsters, and everyone else who crosses his path.At the age of seven Eddie was dumped in a care home by his older sister, following the death of their parents. The experience of this grim institution, with its uncaring ‘care parents’, not only deeply scarred him, but left him haunted to this day.A workaholic, he is driven in pursuit of cheats, even on Christmas Eve, despite being wracked with a vicious head cold. As he makes his way home to his cold apartment and equally cold bed, he has an alarming encounter with a former clients, whom he had previously hounded to death. Even more alarming encounters await him when he logs on to his computer at home. But will any of these encounters change him for the better? We can only hope.