You probably saw the recent story about a publican who grew suspicious of a team that won his pub quiz every week. He and his staff set about trying to discover exactly how they were cheating. Do you fancy testing your knowledge and recall of topical news? Before you read the next paragraph, for one point name the pub, and for two points name the suburb of Manchester where it’s located.

Although I have never set foot in The Barking Dog, or Urmston, as soon as this story broke, my inbox was full of friends and strangers forwarding the link and expressing their amazement – not only because it’s a classic hero’s quest in which good wins against evil, but also because it’s a strange case of life imitating art. This autumn, I published The Killer Question, a crime fiction novel with a plot almost identical to this, albeit with a murder mystery woven in, which admittedly the Urmston case lacks.

In my version, a mysterious new team, The Shadow Knights, arrive at a weekly quiz that’s vital to an otherwise failing rural pub. They walk away with the win every week and drive the quiz master to distraction. How can any team be so spectacularly unchallenged by his carefully crafted questions? Are they really such brilliant quizzers, or simply brilliant cheats? Then a body is pulled from the nearby river and everything changes.

Yet surely, you’re wondering, with the stakes so low in your average pub quiz, how could it possibly end in bloodshed? Well, I’ve been quizzing........

© The Guardian