The Inspiration Behind Counterfeit!, Deception! and Corruption!

When I’m asked about the inspiration behind the Suzanne Jones series, my mind scurries off in a number of directions. The books are all thrillers set in the sometimes murky world of international pharmaceuticals. And hence my thirty plus years working as a manufacturing consultant and technical writer in that industry obviously played a part. They provided me with locations, incidents and anecdotes, many of which end up in the books. But it goes much deeper than that.

The first book in the series, Counterfeit!, is set in Southern Africa in the early part of the twenty-first century and deals with the terrible problem of fake medicines; a problem that has only got worse in the ensuing years and, with the spread of the internet, has become a first world problem as well as being rife in the developing world.

In 1988, real-life pharmacist Dora Akunyili’s sister died when the supposed insulin treating her diabetes turned out to be both fake and contaminated. More than a decade later, Dora was appointed as director general of Nigeria’s National Agency for Food and Drug Administration. The campaign she subsequently waged against counterfeiters led to an assassination attempt, and intimidation of her family. Yet she never gave up. I wanted to write something as a tribute both to Dora, whom I never met, and the other strong women I came across while working in this region.

One of the conversations at the start of the book is between Suzanne Jones, who is a pharmaceutical regulator, and a senior politician. He tells her he can’t afford to worry about quality; it’s the penalty he must pay for obtaining the quantity of drugs needed in the country. I had that conversation for real, back in 2004. At the time, I was horrified by my companion’s attitude. But on reflection, I realised this wasn’t cruelty or evil; it was pragmatism at work. And that not every problem had as clear cut a solution as it seemed to us sitting in our nice offices in the UK.

Counterfeit! started life as a short story written for one of my MA assignments. I later converted it into a full-length novel, which was originally going to be a standalone. But as soon as I’d written the closing lines, I realised the Jones sisters and Francine Matheson had much more to tell us.

The action in book two, Deception!, is set in Brazil. I did a lot of work in Latin America when I first started travelling on business and met some wonderful people. The story, centred on a new health drink, is completely fictional, but the locations are real, and the scenes set in Iguacu brought back particular memories for me. This book also contains the back story of one of the characters, interwoven with the modern thread, and for this we return to Southern Africa, another place I remember fondly.

As is probably apparent, location is a major factor in my writing. In fact, I often start with the ‘where’ long before I know the ‘who’ or the ‘what’. And therefore, it’s no surprise that the third and final part of the series, Corruption!, is set in Russia and Ukraine, a part of the world I visited more than one hundred times in the two decades following the collapse of the Soviet Union. I have worked in all the places mentioned in the story and it has a special place in my heart. The spread of krokodil abuse was a very real issue in Russia around 2010, when this book is set.

But there is one other inspiration behind this series, and that’s the Women’s Murder Club books of James Patterson. I loved the idea of a strong set of female protagonists. Patterson’s are a detective, a journalist, a district attorney and a pathologist; and the action all takes place in the US. I decided to go for three protagonists: a pharmaceutical regulator, a computer whiz with a hidden past, and a politician; and as I’ve shown, the action takes place across the world. But the success of Patterson’s model, so different from the macho leads coming from the likes of Lee Child and David Baldacci, convinced me there was some mileage in female-led thrillers.

I’d like to finish by mentioning one thing that didn’t inspire this series. So many people, when they hear I write about the pharmaceutical industry, assume it’s another version of The Constant Gardener. In John Le Carré’s wonderful book, the villain of the piece is big pharma. And I know there is a view that the industry is rotten to the core. But I worked for big pharma for many years before becoming an independent consultant and I do not believe it’s as black and white as some people would paint it. Yes, there’s a business imperative that sometimes appears to be more important than the patient. But the vast majority of people I worked with cared deeply about the role they played in society. And how many of us would not be here today if it wasn’t for modern pharmaceuticals and medical advances?

So that’s the inspiration behind my series and why I describe them as thrillers set in ‘the sometimes murky world of international pharmaceuticals’.

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When Elizabeth Ducie had been working in the international pharmaceutical industry for nearly thirty years, she decided she’d like to take a break from technical writing—text books, articles and training modules—and write about some of her travel experiences instead. She took some courses in Creative Writing and discovered to her surprise that she was happier, and more successful, writing fiction than memoirs or life-writing. In 2012, she gave up the day job, and started writing full-time. She has published three novels, four collections of short stories and a series of manuals on business skills for writers. She is very happily married and lives in a converted granary in Devon.

Counterfeit! http://elizabethducieauthor.co.uk/book/counterfeit-2/

Deception!  http://elizabethducieauthor.co.uk/book/deception-2/

Corruption! http://elizabethducieauthor.co.uk/book/corruption/

About CORRUPTION!

Out of fear. Out of greed. Out of evil. Corruption springs from many roots.

Teenagers fall prey to a deadly new drug craze sweeping across Russia. Pharmaceuticals destined for Africa turn up on the backstreets of Moscow, St Petersburg and Vladivostok. Regulator Suzanne Jones and her sister, Charlie, fight to stop the pushers before more kids die.

But will their discoveries mean a friend goes to prison? And are they putting their loved ones in danger?

With old adversaries and surprising new allies, the Jones sisters face their toughest challenge to date.

The heart-stopping final episode in the Suzanne Jones series of thrillers set in the sometimes murky world of international pharmaceuticals

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing