THE CHEMIST

Imagine a radio interview, where the host asks, “What is The Chemist about?” The first five times, I stumbled over this simple question. “It’s about a relentless detective,” I blurted. “It’s about a deviant, psycho criminal.” “It’s about stressful relationships.” “It’s about kidnapping and human trafficking.” As writers, we know our plots and characters so intimately, that boiling our stories down to a quick “elevator pitch” description is often difficult. So in this message, I’ll try to clear up the Who? What? and Where? of the story. Plus reveal the reason Why I chose to write the novel. First off, I culled the premise of the book from the newspaper headlines. In Green Bay some years back, there was a playboy tavern owner who was taking female patrons to his home after bar time. There he would slip date rape drugs into their drinks, then secretly photograph them. It took nearly a year for his crimes to be revealed, mostly because his victims had no knowledge of what he was actually doing to them. Tom Clancy says that every work of fiction starts with one question, “What if ‘X’ happened?” And that’s how The Chemist was born. What would happen, I wondered, if a cool, calculating rich guy, with a background in chemistry, invented a date rape drug that worked in a matter of minutes? And further, what if he developed a unique method of administering his drug to unsuspecting victims in public places? Who would he chose to kidnap? What would he do with the victims? How would he avoid detection by law enforcement? In other words, how could he commit a near-perfect crime? This individual, of course, had to be a bit of a sociopath to begin with. And Tobias Crenshaw certainly fit’s the bill. Thus a monster was born: a man willing to put his own successful life at risk, along with his entire family, all in order to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting public. So how does law enforcement stop such an intelligent and mysterious criminal? Enter Green Bay detective Cale Van Waring, a seasoned and savvy investigator. But in order to unravel such an intricate crime (where no clues are left, no victims found), it has taken well over a year. As a result, Cale’s live-in girlfriend has had it with him. She is threatening to move out if he doesn‘t get serious, and this “relationship stressor” has them both of them frustrated and hovering close to a boiling point. Mix in a series of surprise twists and turns, along with a cast of colorful supporting characters, and there you have it. The Chemist is really about crime and passion, love and social deviance. Now why couldn’t I have conveyed that so simply in those early radio interviews?