FATE SURPRISED HER

---

 

SYNOPSIS

“. . . they resort to deceptions of their own, pushing against time and risk to stop her. . .”

Ella Barnes is a veteran war zone photojournalist who has seen way too much senseless violence. Quitting her harrowing assignment in Nigeria, she returns to her peaceful retreat in Austin. But her homecoming spirals into a nightmare when she discovers her husband’s chronic infidelities, soon followed by his death in a hotel room. When the pathologist who conducts his autopsy covertly contacts Ella with disturbing revelations, and then mysteriously “commits suicide,” Ella vows to uncover the truth behind their deaths and the double life Brady was living.

Ella’s investigating soon leads to Annalise Steiner who learned to scam and swindle from her deadbeat father. But unlike him, she’s good at it. Now she makes millions as an underworld Dark Broker, and has recently moved into to a river-island home in Austin to begin the final stages of her biggest con.

In a treacherous gambit of bribes and lies, she has stolen the anticounterfeiting algorithms of a major international pharmaceutical company for their soon-to-be released line of new medications. She sells the algorithms to a transnational drug trader, enabling him to infiltrate counterfeit pharmaceuticals into the legitimate global supply chain without risk of discovery. Even though Annalise’s price is high, the buyer knows it’s only a fraction of the fortune he can make with the stolen algorithms.

But Annalise overreaches. Driven by greed, she sells the algorithms again, to a second international dealer. Neither man knows the other is involved. Each of them believes he has made an “exclusive” deal with Annalise.

Meanwhile, Alan Shea, a former intelligence operative who has tracked Annalise for several years, finally catches up with her in Austin. Soon Ella and Alan’s paths cross, and they team up. Plunging into Annalise’s labyrinth of lies, they resort to deceptions of their own, pushing against time and risk to stop her scheme.

But just as Annalise’s complex con spins toward its finale, it begins to unravel violently. At the same time Alan and Ella’s fabrications reach a tipping point as well. Alan is almost killed, leaving Ella to pursue Annalise alone to the Cayman Islands. There, with careful planning and a lot of luck, Ella sets another trap for Annalise. But fate catches both women by surprise. When the end comes, nothing goes the way either of them had planned—or imagined.

AUTHOR’S COMMENTS

“. . . fueling the worst epidemic in U.S. history . . . with no end in sight”

On two different occasions in late 2003 I met with two different former CIA operatives who at that time were the directors of security operations for different major U.S. pharmaceutical companies located in Latin America. Both men told me similar stories about alarming security breaches that neither man could explain, and which were resulting in the shocking presence of counterfeit meds in their company’s products. These counterfeits were causing fatalities, though at that time they were still under the radar. However, for obvious reasons, the big pharma companies were frantic to stop the deaths and the counterfeiting. But unknown to any of us at that time, this was only the beginning of a disturbing trend and a grim reality that has never received the international public attention that it deserves, even though the reality of counterfeit pharmaceuticals has increased exponentially over the two decades since then.

Ever since those conversations I’ve kept my eye on this phenomenon, and during the following years I wrote two novels about the growing peril of counterfeit pharma. Agents and publishers alike declined to represent or publish the books. For some reason there was always some flaw in the novels that made them unacceptable, even after rewrites. During that time also the illicit trade in counterfeiting of pharmaceuticals has continued to accelerate with increasing sophistication. It is a science now, with the same potential for horrific outcomes as the worst fears for AI. The rate of deaths from counterfeit medications has exploded, and are at historically high levels, “. . . fueling the worst epidemic in U.S. history . . . with no end in sight”, according to The Guardian in September, 2023.

Now I’ve written Fate Surprised Her, my third book on the subject. I’ve learned over the years of writing that every book you write can be written over and over, endlessly if one wished to do it from the points of view of other characters, or take other nuanced angles of perspective. Such is this novel, too, an angle, a perspective, a point of view. Like life itself, it is just one of countless ways of encountering our humanity, in a certain context, at a certain point in time. However I tell it, the fact remains that it is based on serious research over a long period of time. And at it’s core, this fiction is fact.

It’s my first eBook original. It is not being published in a paper edition.