Novelist Allen Wyler joins me today to chat about his new medical thriller, Dead End Deal.
Bio:
Allen’s thrillers have twice been nominated for the prestigious Thriller Award. He has served on the Board of Directors of the International Thriller Writers and is also an active member of the North American Crime Writers and Mystery Writers of America. He lives in Seattle.
Welcome, Allen. Please tell us about your current release.
Actually, this book was a 2013 Thriller Awards nominee and is now re-released by Stairway Press.
Neurosurgeon Jon Ritter is on the verge of a medical breakthrough that will change the world. His groundbreaking surgical treatment – using stem cells – is set to eradicate the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease and give hope to millions.
But when the procedure is slated for testing, everything comes to an abrupt and terrifying halt. Ritter’s colleague is gunned down by a radical anti-abortion group that not only claims responsibility but promises more of the same.
Faced with a dangerous reality, but determined to succeed, Ritter turns to a long-time colleague to conduct a clandestine clinical trial in Seoul, Korea. But after successful trials, Ritter and his allies are thrown into a horrifying nightmare scenario: the trial patients are murdered and Ritter is the number one suspect.
Aided by his beautiful lab assistant, Yeonhee Lee, Ritter flees the country and becomes the target of an international manhunt involving Korean Police, the FBI, zealous fanatics, and coldly efficient assassin.
What inspired you to write this book?
I was a guest lecturer at a Seoul medical center when I wondered what it would be like to suddenly be stuck in a foreign country with a totally foreign language without a passport while being falsely accused of a crime. Bizarre? You bet. But this is the way my mind sometimes works. I was so smitten with the idea that I developed it into a project.
Excerpt from Dead End Deal:
(From the prologue)
Trophozyme Corporation—Seattle, WA
Seemed like a dynamite idea twelve months ago. Still did, for that matter. But now Marge Schwartz was killing him because of it.
Sweat sprouted across Richard Stillman’s forehead—making him worry that any second now a drop would slither into an eye and cause him to blink, but he’d be damned if he’d wipe it.
Besides, with what? The back of his hand?
And if he did that, then what? Wipe his hand on his shirt? How would that look?
No, he had to be tough, cool, unflustered. In essence: in charge.
Schwartz leaned forward on her elbows and drilled him with that squinty-eyed, no-shit-serious look she’d mastered during her take-no-prisoners ascension of corporate ladders.
“The board wants a solid plan to rectify the situation, Richard. Not some grandiose hypothesis.”
Easy for her to say—especially with the clarity retrospection brings.
He swallowed the gastric reflux burning the back of his throat and willed himself to appear relaxed. Let her harangue. After all, that’s her job, especially given the financial disaster facing Trophozyme. A disaster for which he freely took responsibility. Yet, he still believed that with enough time, their present track would be profitable. But that required more money and, the way things were going, the company would bankrupt in six months unless he pulled the proverbial rabbit from the hat.
The board members eyed him with various emotions that were easy to read on their faces: empathy from Levy, disdain from Chandler and bored bemusement from Gliner. Warner, well, she was apparently more engrossed in her smartphone than the bloodbath playing out before her.
Schwartz began collecting the various papers in front of her to replace in the manila envelope.
The bitch!
He flashed the vacant, non-threatening smile he’d picked up from their VP of marketing. One he practiced in front of a mirror until he could produce under the most stressful conditions. He scanned the room, making eye contact with each board member—well, except for Warner—certain every one of those smug, egotistical bastards believed they could run the company better than he. Truth be told, their success was due to either dumb luck or magnificent ass-kissing. Or both.
Schwartz raised her lids in exaggerated expectation.
“Well?”
Trophozyme needed a new blockbuster therapy. Their pipeline was drying up. With the patent on their only revenue-generating product expiring in less than a month, their competitors were already licking their chops, gearing up production of a generic substitute while several major shareholders dumped stock. Once the short sellers started…
What exciting project are you working on next?
Dead End Deal was my last stand-alone medical thriller. I’d always wanted to write about cybercrime and hackers and wanted to develop a series. Since then I started the successful Deadly Odds series that deals with issues such as ransomware, personal identity theft etc. My protagonist is a hacker turned white-hat digital detective and part time FBI confidential informant. Deadly Odds 6.0 is due for release August 16th.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Great question. Difficult answer. Being in academic medicine I’d written and published numerous research papers but had always secretly wanted to write fiction. Thrillers in particular. One day I came home from rounds and started—out of nowhere—roughing out my first novel. It, of course, went nowhere. Ten years later I landed my first contract, a two-book deal, with Tor/Forge.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I write every day for varying periods of time depending on how it’s going, but I am very disciplined about putting in some time each day. My other creative outlet is photography. Wish I had more time for it, however. I love to read other thriller writers and wish I had more time to do everything.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Don’t know if this qualifies as a quirk, exactly, but I really like to try to move stories along. The difficulty for me in doing this is developing characters as completely as possible without slowing the flow of the story.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
For reasons that have remained very murky to me, I always wanted to be a doctor, but a General Practitioner (as they were called then). Once I was in medical school, I became fascinated with neurosurgery.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Thank you for taking the time to read this interview and to love reading. For me it’s a joy to read.