Reality bites in thriller novel

FOR more than a year, author John M Green immersed himself in the Vatican. Its history and intrigues, pomp and popes – Rome’s historic walled enclave was the perfect setting for his fourth thriller.

Green, who lives in Sydney, did an enormous amount of research and talked to those in the know, including the then Australian ambassador to the Holy See, John McCarthy. Then he hit a brick wall.

“I was two-thirds of the way into the book and had written about 50,000 words when I couldn’t get the story to go where I wanted it to,” Green reveals. “In the end, I kept one chapter and scrapped the rest.”

The Tao Deception, which was released by Pantera Press on November 1, rose from the ashes. Its title and cover design shout China – specifically, Dandong in Liaoning Province, as readers soon learn.

Never heard of it? Neither has Green’s flame-haired heroine, Dr Tori Swyft, but that doesn’t stop her from penetrating the horrifying secret hidden beneath the north-eastern city that borders North Korea.

Tori Swyft fans will be thrilled she’s back. The Australian-born nuclear science PhD, ex-CIA agent, corporate deal-maker and one-time junior surfing champion made her debut in Green’s last novel, The Trusted, in which a cabal of radical environmentalists come perilously close to decimating the world’s population and destroying its economy.

This time, world leaders are being assassinated by drone-delivered toxic gas. A hitherto unknown Chinese Islamist terror group, Rome Under Allah, appears to be responsible.

Infinitely worse, a secret circle of China’s elite, determined to create a “new China”, threatens to annihilate the rest of the world via satellite-delivered electromagnetic pulse (EMP).

Death by drone? “Pentagon confronts a new threat from ISIS: exploding drones” read a chilling October 12 headline in The New York Times, which reported that three Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq had been killed when they opened a model plane-sized, remotely piloted drone that looked like numerous others used for surveillance, but turned out to be a bomb.

There have been other recent causes for high anxiety, including North Korea’s nuclear test in September, observes Green.
“If you can imagine it, then someone might be doing it,” says the author whose musings are fed by wide research, expert opinion and at times, inside knowledge.

“Nuclear EMPs are no fantasy. What ignited my interest was seeing EMPs listed as a Top 10 Global Emerging Risk while I was chairing the risk committee of QBE.”

It comes as no surprise that Green is deputy chair of the board of QBE, Australia’s biggest global insurer. Originally a lawyer whose clients ranged from Long Bay Prison inmates – “legal aid work” – to tycoons Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer, he was a seasoned investment banker before he burst onto the thriller scene with his 2010 debut novel, Nowhere Man, and the world of high finance has provided rich -inspiration.

The Tao Deception has also benefited from Green’s Polish Jewish upbringing. Chinese cuisine fans may be aghast at his irreverent take on a Chinese banquet, but when it comes to chicken extremities Green is on solid ground.

“Like the Chinese cooks, my mother used every part of a chicken – giblets, neck, the lot – and I loved eating the feet.”

A key passion today is Pantera Press, which Green co-founded in 2008 with his daughter Alison, who is CEO of the boutique publishing house and was included in this year’s 100 Women of Influence selected by the Australian Financial Review and Westpac.

A new Tori Swyft book is in progress, planned for release in late 2017, and if Green tires of eco-political and cyber thrillers, he can always dip into his first career. It’s full of potential for a ripping legal thriller as one anecdote reveals.

“I got a phone call one night in 1985 and this very English voice said, ‘We’d like you to act for the Palace,’” recounts the author. “I instantly thought ‘Palace Theatre’ and said something like, ‘Happy to help; I love the theatre.’

“There was embarrassed pause and then the chap said, ‘Er, I mean the Palace.’

“It turned out that Buckingham Palace was assisting Princess Michael of Kent – her mother and brother lived in Sydney – whose late father, Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, was being accused of having been a key Nazi.

“Ultimately, the truth about the baron’s wartime activities remained elusive, but it was an interesting case.”

John M Green’s The Tao Deception is published by Pantera Press. $29.99 (rrp).

REPORT by Zelda Cawthorne

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