Author R&R with Sean Chercover

 

Before Sean Chercover turned his hand to writing fiction, he was a TV writer, video editor, support diver, and private investigator in Chicago and New Orleans. His novel Big City, Bad Blood, won the Shamus Award for Best First Novel, and Sean's books have since been nominated for other major crime fiction awards.

His Game Trilogy features Daniel Byrne, an investigator for the Vatican’s secretive Office of the Devil’s Advocate. In the first book, The Trinity Game, Daniel Byrne was searching for a miracle, which led him to his uncle and childhood guardian, the Reverend Tim Trinity, a con man and possible prophet.

In the follow-up novel, The Devil's Game, Daniel teams up with disgraced physician Kara Singh and delves further into the Trinity Phenomenon — the "gift" of prophecy that's spreading like a plague — and infiltrates a covert government facility to expose a conspiracy with potentially devastating global consequences.

Sean is currently on a blog tour promoting The Devil's Game and stopped by In Reference to Murder to discuss his writing, research, and the new book:

 

The plot was inspired by conversations I used to have with a good friend named Sasha Neyfakh. He was a prominent microbiologist who spent his life fighting in the human race's existential struggle against anthrax and other deadly pathogens, which aim to displace humans as top predator on the planet. We talked about the coming pandemic (yes, there will be one) and about how large the depopulation might be when it arrives. And how our criminally negligent overuse of antibiotics is dramatically decreasing our chances of winning this war, and bringing it about sooner. Cheery stuff like that.

 

We shared a love of crime fiction and conspiracy theories, traded clippings and links about various theories that seemed fun. One that caught our attention was the statistically unlikely rash of deaths at the time, among prominent microbiologists around the world. There were some very entertaining conspiracy theories based on the premise that these deaths were actually disguised assassinations, speculating about who could be behind it, and why. We both thought the deaths coincidental, but we also thought the dead microbiologists conspiracy would be a terrific premise for a thriller, and for me, it fit beautifully with the geopolitics of the threat of pandemic.

 

The research was a total blast and also sobering. Some of it involved learning more about what life is like and how power and influence works in Nigeria and Liberia and other places big media chooses to ignore. Learning more about our misuse of antibiotics and how that damages the bacterial biome that keeps us healthy and alive, and about our fight for survival against microscopic pathogens.

 

And then there's the rollicking insane asylum that is the world of conspiracy theorists. There's no shortage of mental illness on the Internet (thank you, Captain Obvious) but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And mental illness aside, at least these people are willing to admit that "History is a set of lies, agreed upon," (Napoleon Bonaparte) and "History is written by the victors," (Winston S. Churchill). Or official histories have to be amended so often now, as we learn of former misdeeds, now leaked or declassified, previously scorned as "wing-nut conspiracy theories."

 

Incorporating both "round-the-bend-crazy" and "maybe-not-so-crazy" conspiracy theories into THE DEVIL'S GAME was so much fun, and I love that people are questioning which is which.

 

 

You can learn more about Sean and his books via his website or follow him in Facebook and Twitter. The Devil's Game is available as an ebook via Amazon, and the print versions are available via all book retailers.