- Dryburgh Abbey features in Dust to Dust - Engraving by William Miller, Wikipedia Commons
Internationally bestselling author Ken McClure’s latest novel, Dust to Dust, is the eighth book to feature Sci-Med investigator Dr Steven Dunbar. Once again McClure is at the top of his game as a medical thriller writer as Dunbar finds himself investigating the possible outbreak of a virus which may have been responsible for the 14th century pandemic, Black Death.
Fictional Scenarios That Could Happen in Real Life
The uncomfortably plausible and hair raising plots that characterise McClure’s works are inspired by his former career as a research scientist with the UK’s Medical Research Council.
“What happens in my novels could happen in real life,” McClure says. Usually the idea for a novel starts out with a small piece of information: “I’ll come across a little known medical or scientific fact which interests or alarms me. I’ll investigate to make sure I’m not getting the wrong end of the stick.” If the piece of information stands up to McClure’s initial investigations and is still a source of alarm, he begins to work a story around it.
He emphasises that although the resulting novels are “a mixture of fact and fiction”, he carries out painstaking research to ensure the medical details are accurate. “It’s important to me as a scientist to make sure it’s right.”
An Alternative Agenda
His says that while his insistence on accuracy is partly because he does not want to leave his books open to criticism from those practicing in medical fields, he does have an ulterior motive: “I don’t admit to this too often but I have an alternative agenda and that is readers of McClure books should know a little more about science at the end of the novel than at the beginning. It’s a source of disgruntlement to me that it’s quite socially acceptable to be ignorant of science but not to be ignorant of art. You can’t throw up your hands at a dinner party and say, ‘Who the hell is Mozart?’”
Exploring Controversial Areas of Medical Research in Fiction
In 2000 McClure gave up his day job to become a full time writer. Although his scientific and writing careers went well together – “one was an escape from the other, they both complemented each other” – he admits that in some ways turning to full time writing was “a blessed relief.”
Fiction writing has given McClure the space and freedom to publicly voice concerns about certain areas of medical research which he wouldn’t have been able to do in quite the same way in his professional capacity as a research scientist. Gulf War Syndrome is a topic that McClure finds particularly upsetting and writing The Gulf Conspiracy gave him the opportunity to explore controversies surrounding the mystery illness through the eyes of his protagonist, Steven Dunbar.
The Lazarus Strain was McClure’s fictional response to a proposed medical research project which caused him some indignation. He had heard that a group of American scientists had decided to resurrect a 1918 flu virus in order to create a vaccine for it. “I thought that was a crazy thing to do. It was creating a problem to create a solution. They said it would be done in a very secure lab but it was a very secure lab that let foot and mouth disease loose [in the UK in 2007] over a silly argument about who was responsible for the drains. That says something about how secure a secure lab is!”
Dust to Dust
Like The Lazarus Strain, Dust to Dust serves as a warning of what could happen if a deadly disease from the past is allowed to resurface. In McClure’s latest book, cell biologist John Motram is a supporter of the theory that the Black Death was not caused by bubonic plague but rather by an unknown virus. When he learns that bodies of victims of the Black Death have been preserved for centuries underneath Dryburgh Abbey, he jumps at the chance to explore the secret tomb, with disastrous results. It’s a race against time for Steven Dunbar to investigate whether a deadly virus has been released.
Dust to Dust by Ken McClure (Polygon, £16.99)
Helen Caldwell - Helen blogs about the Edinburgh literary scene, authors, writing, books and tea at My Writing Life.
