Book plot - Do you think this would actually happen?

[steppemum]

I have just read a book. There is a major incident aroudn which the wholeof the rest of the book revolves.

To me, the incident is so unlikely, that it spoilt the rest of the book.
But I though, maybe I am too conservative?
So do you think this is likely enough to be true? Or is it just ridiculous?
Plot:

group of young people (17-19) go out to a party. Get in car to go home. Driver is drunk, but much less drunk than the rest of them, the rest of them push him into driving.
On the way home he hits a pedestrian and she is thrown over the car and dies. (so far, believable)
Road is deserted, and the group gather round the woman. One (not the driver) suggests that they should get rid of the body, as she is dead anyway, but if this came out, all their lives would be ruined. Some of them (including driver) protest, but are overruled. So they put body in the boot and drive home.
They go to their favourite pub which is closed, but they have a key. Take the body indoors and sit around trying to decide what to do.

Then the body moves. At this point 2 of them shout hard that they must phone an ambulance/police and save her. Driver is one of those. Again overruled, and instead the leader strangles the woman so she is now dead.
They then lift up the floorboards of the pub basement (used as a restaurant) and bury her under the floor, wrapped in blankets.

Life then returns to normal, and the body is never discoverd.
Time passes.....
-----

Well? Some many things don't add up for me. Including that they would all go along with this, the fatc that they deliberately murder her, the fact they bury her under the floor, and no-one notices. The body doesn't smell, etc etc.

What do you think?

It sounds pretty far fetched to me, but I want to read it!

Isn't this the plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer ('horror' film I remember watching as a teen)

The body not being found is far-fetched.

Some of the rest is very similar to a real life court case I have heard of.

No I don't think she'd be stranger, I think they would've put her in the car, nipped to get a sober parent to drive and had them drive to the hospital.

I agree, it's as if the author was too lazy to add in any minor detail to answer for the smell of a decomposing body. It could have been an abandoned shop, but even still, unless it was in a hardly used street there would have been a period of time during which passers by would have noticed from the street, let alone inside. It's a bit tell tale heart but without the bricks.

It’s a bit of a weird decision making process. I guess if they put her under the floorboards of a pub cellar it would be pretty cold so maybe the body wouldn’t decompose in a stinky way?

Yeah, too far fetched. I’d close the book if I read that.

Didn’t that happen in one of the Scary Movies as well?

(Probably parodying I Know What You Did Last Summer !)

This is the plot of Guilty, a Scottish drama that was on last year. It was believable because they put the dead body back in his house. And the dead body was actually dead.

There was a similar plotline in a Scandi drama recently - the interesting plot hinged on this similar thing happening which I found hard to believe. Also I seem to remember a similar plot in the worst book I have ever read which is Anything for Her by Jack Jordan. My God, that is a bad book.

SPOILER FOR SPANISH SERIES COMING

It wasn't as bad as a Spanish series I watched though, which was intriguing and interesting (girl disappears, man who is suspected may or may not have amnesia, may or may not have killed her, and if he did may or may not know that he did) - until it turned out he had kidnapped her, then forgotten, and she had been lying in a dungeon somewhere with no food or water and with injuries for weeks and weeks - and was still alive. I just couldn't carry on watching it then it was so stupid.

I mean if you've ever smelt a decomposing rat beneath the floorboards you'll know they give off an almighty stink so I'd imagine a human cadaver might whiff ever so slightly. Seems an odd oversight.

Well tbf I think the first part has happened, and bodies can mummify rather than decompose if the conditions are right. Both together does seem a tad far fetched, I grant you.

It depends how far down the basement is. I have been in a hotel that had a sub-sub-basement that was 3 floors below ground level. I never went down there, it was a ladder leading down into utter darkness. Any body left down there would be impossible to find unless you knew it was there.

I think the psychology is more shaky. One or two people could conspire to keep quiet, but a whole group? Surely one of them would have an attack of a guilty conscience. Maybe it would feel unreal, like a nightmare afterwards. But there would be missing person posters etc. Difficult to keep that inside without some level of mental disturbance developing.

@larrythelizard

Isn't this the plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer ('horror' film I remember watching as a teen)

no. well it might be, but that isn't the book!

It sounds far-fetched, but being a bit fascinated by true crime stories has taught me that nothing is far fetched.

Seriously. People do bizarre things.

The plot sounds very familiar - what book is it?

Oh lots if interesting comments.
I think that the part where they kill her on the road and try to hide the body is pretty realistic. I can imagine that happening.

I guess I think the rest is unlikey because:

1. psychology. The actual driver, ie the one who killed her was the one pushing to call the police. And crucially in terms of psychology, he wasn't alone. At least 2 of them objected. I think if 2 people objected, then they would end up calling the police. Or, when the body moved, putting it back in the car and driving her to the hospital and claiming that they brought her straight there.

1. so many odd details. Why would you bring the body indoors and then sit around looking at it? Why wouldn't you leave the body in the boot?

1. when she moved, the decision to strangle her, and for one of them to go ahead and strangel her, that is quite a step beyond hiding the body.

1. the body under the floorboards. The basement was used as a restaurant and she was under the floorboards! Why didn't it smell? Why didn;t anyone notice that the floor had been dug up? This part is the most unbelievable to me.

The psychology part is interesting, and while it may seem a little unbelievable that people would actually go along with something so extreme, it has happened so many times in the past; you only need to read about some of the atrocities that take place in war time to see that it is distinctly possible. See also why do abused women not leave their partners, and why do so many people turn a blind eye to child abuse.

People never know what they would do until they are actually in a situation so if someone (the 'leader') was taking charge while everyone else didn't know what to do it could lead to something very wrong happening that ordinarily most of the group would think horrifying.

I agree that it's the plot of several films

I am reluctant to post the name of the book, as while this is annoying, the rest of the book is good, and I don't wnat to spoil it for anyone!

I remember when a fox crawled under one of the school portacabins and died. Stank to high heaven for weeks after they managed to remove it. That part isn't believable.

The group dynamic and the fact that they were drunk is maybe makes the bad decision making more believable

I actually thought there was a dead body in the pub I used to work at, the smell in the kitchen was starting to become unbearable, it was rancid. We were teenagers so naturally gossiped about the chef probably bumped off his girlfriend and diced her up. When it became awful to the point that we couldn’t pass a certain area without gagging, the owners decided to move all the big units to find a bag of rotten steak between the fryer and the grill, just sort of wedged in the gap, but it would have had to have been put there. I’ve never seen/smelt anything like it, the bag it was in had burst and the juices were black. One of the waitresses fainted.

@Throwntothewolves

The psychology part is interesting, and while it may seem a little unbelievable that people would actually go along with something so extreme, it has happened so many times in the past; you only need to read about some of the atrocities that take place in war time to see that it is distinctly possible. See also why do abused women not leave their partners, and why do so many people turn a blind eye to child abuse. People never know what they would do until they are actually in a situation so if someone (the 'leader') was taking charge while everyone else didn't know what to do it could lead to something very wrong happening that ordinarily most of the group would think horrifying.

I agree that it's the plot of several films

yes, I agree in part, and of course there is plenty in history to show it happens.

But I think the thing that makes it unbelievable for me is that initially more than one person said no.

I know from psychology studies that if you are the only one saying no, then you are very likely to give in, but once there is more than one of you, you are much more likely to stick to it.

This made me think of the double bagger we had to look at in the morgue. The smell is beyond horrendous - think human sized chicken breast that's gone off.

Darren brown did a thing about the psychology of all this kind of thing once. It has to do with how the more people agree to something, the more people are likely to follow.

He set up a situation where essentially someone was encouraged to do various different things through voting from the audience, and in the end it ended up with him being hit by a car. It was all set up obviously, but he did it to illustrate how people can be led and will follow a crowd.

Also re the plot, people do strange things. I watched an episode of 24 hours in a&e once, where a bloke came into hospital and was talking about his life as people do on these programmes.

He talked about how his wife had been diagnosed with MS and how her life had become unbearable to her. One day he came home and found that she had put a bin bag over her head to try to kill herself. She was still alive but unconscious by then, so he said that he knew she wanted to die, so he tightened the strings on the bag, waited until she’d died and then rang 999. .

He was charged with her murder obviously, although because of her psychiatrist and consultant’s evidence during the trial it was agreed that she had been set on ending her own life so he got a suspended sentence.

But the way in which he talked about having tightened the bag around her neck and waited for her to die was so matter of fact I was just incredulous.