A city law firm has ordered a senior employee to stop publishing a pornographic novel online.
Deidre Dare had been posting weekly instalments on her website, detailing drug-taking, heavy drinking and casual sex.
But her bosses at Allen & Overy have pulled the plug, apparently to protect the firm’s reputation.
Miss Dare, who is thought to earn £150,000 a year at the firm’s Russian office, is calling her steamy online novel, Expat: A Weekly Serialized Novel About Living in Moscow.
It describes the sordid lifestyle pursued by staff at a British-led professional firm in the capital.
Miss Dare’s promiscuous heroine describes herself as a ‘part drug addict, part alcoholic’ who regularly turns up for work hours late and hungover.
She and her colleagues are constantly seeking new sexual conquests, attend obscene sex shows involving donkeys and dwarves, blow fortunes at expensive restaurants and gossip about where they are planning to get drunk next.
At one point, the heroine sums up her personal philosophy with the phrase: ‘It is better to wake up in bed next to a random stranger than a pile of your own vomit.’
In another instalment she says: ‘I drink too much. I do too many drugs. I f*** around. I waste days and time. I spend too much time at parties. There’s a shorter way of saying all that: “I live in Moscow”.’
But in a note on her website, Miss Dare, an American in her 30s, said her 12th chapter might be her last.
‘The author has been forbidden from publishing further chapters for the time being. She will resume if and when she is allowed to,’ she wrote.
On Allen & Overy’s website, Miss Dare is described as a senior associate who joined last year.
It adds: ‘Deidre is an international finance and projects lawyer who has represented diverse clients involved in financings, equipment leasing and projects around the world.’
Asked about Miss Dare’s pornographic output, a source at Allen & Overy said: ‘This wasn’t widely known about today, but once it was, it was clear it could bring the firm into disrepute.
‘As it is, we’ve still got her name on our website, so there’s no indication she’s facing the sack.’
An official spokesman would only say that the firm aimed to uphold the ‘highest standards of professional conduct’.
Allen & Overy is in the so-called ‘Magic Circle’ of leading law firms and partners routinely earn more than £1million. It recently gave Prince Harry’s girlfriend, Chelsy Davy, work experience.
It is thought that Miss Davy might take a full-time job with the firm when she graduates.
Miss Dare was unavailable for comment.
In 2005 solicitor Paul Wragg, 26, quit international law firm Hammonds after writing, as Alex Gilmore, Fish Sunday Thinking, a racy story of life at a top firm that scandalised the legal world.