Fan Fiction, Displaced and Denounced, Bob Denton

Displaced and Denounced: Synopsis – Teaser 1 – Teaser 2 – Author

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Displaced and Denounced reimagines two of Charles Dickens novels in modern settings and language, not to make them “woke”, but to show how Dickens’ storytelling, characterisation, and social insight still resonate today. By removing the barriers of Victorian language and context, the novel highlights the timeless skill of his writing.

DISPLACED: OLIVE

This is a modern retelling of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (now approaching two hundred years old). Just how might Oliver Twist unfold today?

The tale is still relevant in that social care still fails many of its recipients. Dickens provides excellent characterisations, but his settings and his use of language are so clearly from that time, that they have become something of a barrier to many modern readers. His original themes of exploitation, survival, identity and hope, remain powerful. They are not lost relics of the Victorian era but realities that persist today.

Displaced: Olive twists the central character’s gender, Oliver becoming Olive Turner, who has slipped through the cracks of the modern care system, as she prepares for adulthood with quiet determination. She feels she wants, and deserves, more.

Offered several career paths, she finds neither fulfilling. Determined to shape her own future, she escapes with a fellow resident. Soon abandoned she decides to travel on to London. On the way, she is befriended and groomed by Savvy, who draws her into a Bulgarian London crime gang, run by Dragan. Trained in begging and shoplifting, she is quickly arrested and placed in a children’s home.

But unseen forces are circling: competing family connections, criminal ambitions, and a mysterious figure who wants her implicated in a burglary. They each have different ambitions for her future.

Olive is seized by gang members Georgi, Savvy, and Sally, under orders from a mysterious figure. Dragan plots to embroil her in a burglary to discredit her. When the burglary goes wrong, Olive is attacked and left for dead. Seeking help from the burgled house, she finds unexpected kindness, perhaps a chance for safety.

But the gang is closing in. Sally, torn by loyalty and fear, warns Olive’s supporters. What follows is a chain of violence, betrayal, and reckoning that brings Olive’s story to its explosive conclusion.

Olive’s journey reflects the challenges faced by young people navigating today’s care system, modern criminal networks, and fractured social structures, while maintaining the emotional truth at the heart of Dickens’ original work.

DENOUNCED: A TALE OF TWO COURTS

A modern reworking of A Tale of Two Cities. This book, Denounced: A Tale of Two Courts explores loyalty, identity, justice, and the fragile line between freedom and persecution.

This story is set between London and Tehran, to explore the modern equivalent of Dickens’ two cities, and to show how personal identity, family history, and state power can collide in ways that are both contemporary and timeless

Two cities. Two courts. One man caught between them.

Darius Mason, lives quietly in London, he is an Irano‑British language teacher. He is however, falsely accused of spying for Iran, in London’s High Court. But, he defeats those trumped-up charges, saved by a a sharp barrister and a bizarre claim of mistaken identity.

Darius binds himself to Mehdi Ghassemi, who has been freshly released from Tehran’s infamous Evin prison, where he had been incarcerated for eighteen years. Mehdi’s daughter, Tara, brings her father home in a fragile state, and Darius becomes part of their recovery, and their lives.

As Darius and Tara grow close, he hides his true Iranian family name, fearing its consequences. Mehdi insists that he only reveal it on their wedding day.

After the wedding, life briefly stabilises, until Darius is drawn back to Tehran. There, the zealous and well-placed Dehdari family denounce him to the authorities. He too is imprisoned in Evin, reliving some of Mehdi’s nightmare. Mehdi and Tara travel to Tehran, and use Mehdi’s notoriety to get him freed.

But the Dehdaris are relentless. New accusations lead to a shocking sentence: Darius is to be publicly hanged, the next day. With time running out, his family and friends must fight across borders, cultures, and courts to try to save him.

Darius’s journey reflects the precariousness faced by those caught between national cultures and courts, while honouring the emotional truth at the heart of Dickens’ original novel.

The author summed up, ‘Both of these stories transferred to modern times readily and appropriately, the original plots and characters were full-grown for the 21st century,’