Jeffrey Archer's Latest Book Has A Plagiarised Story?

[The Simpleton 2]

I've posted this news in a creative writing site, and since our forum rules say no copying, I'll re-write the whole thing. I hope that's ok - I'm not writing this news for myCENTs - I just want to know whether I'm right or not.

 

I got the book And Thereby Hangs A Tale by Jeffrey Archer delivered to me today, and I just finished reading the first story, titled, Stuck on You. As I was halfway through the story, I couldn't help noticing that it was strangely similar to another story that I had read long back. Thanks to Google, I found out that the title of that story is The Case of the Sharp-Eyed Jeweler, written by Nicolas Bentle. This story can be found as part of a collection of detective stories titled Six Detective Stories by S.E.Paces.

 

The overall plot of both stories is entirely different, but a particular piece, which involves the stealing of a precious diamond, has clearly been "inspired" from the old story. Now, Stuck on You is marked with an asterisk in Archer's book, indicating that it has been based on real incidents. So is it possible that someone just narrated this old story to Archer, or that someone used the concept of that old story in real life?!! I'm not sure what to think. I haven't read any of Archer's short stories before so I don't know if such a thing is common. What do you people think? I could have given the plot details of both stories here, but as of now I don't think that's needed? I can give the details if needed, though.

Edited May 10, 2010 by The Simpleton (see edit history)

[sukhi 2]

Most of the time novelists and filmmakers do take content or inspiration from other works. that is how it goes on i belive. We had warcraft ( Game )heroes also had many of it's characters taken from cartoon movies of yesteryears..but taking out direct passages from other's works i would count as plagiarism Eti Shubham,Sukhi

[iGuest 3]

There is also one more instance of plagiarism in Archer's new collection of short stories "And thereby hangs a tale". The fourth story "A blind date" is a rip off of Ruskin Bond's story "The eyes have it". Penguin Books : The Best of Ruskin Bond; 1994. the plot is exactly the same, embellished with some typical Archerisms.