NEW BOOK TELLS HOW PROTAGONIST KILLS SMOKERS [09/15]

A new book -- "Gasp! A Novel of Revenge" by Frank Freudberg (Barricade) -- describes how a disgruntled smoker, intent on getting revenge for his own lung cancer, decides to get revenge by poisoning cigarette and killing other smokers.

Here are some excerpts from a recent article about the book:

"GASP!," being released by Barricade Books this week, examines the eerie world of an embittered wire service editor who learns he is dying of lung cancer the same week he is fired from his job. Deciding that if he is going to die he will take the tobacco business down with him, he launches a deadly plan to poison hundreds of packages of cigarettes and plant them in convenience stores, restaurants, offices, factories and bars across America.

"In researching the book, I did everything my character did except, of course, actually poison people," said Frank Freudberg, the Wayne, Pennsylvania, author of the book. "I even dialed an 800 number and ordered cyanide crystals and had them sent to a mail box service ... a week later I had enough cyanide to murder 2,500 people."

Freudberg said he learned how to open cigarette packs and reseal them. He then traveled throughout the country with packs he had marked with a red "X" instead of actually spiking them with sodium cyanide. He said he carried out his scheme in 13 states, slipping the packages into racks at newsstands and convenience stores, leaving them at restaurants and bars and even getting them into vending machines.

"In every case, an unsuspecting consumer either bought or picked up the pack with the red X," Freudberg said.

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