Bestselling author and attorney/mediator Robert Bailey’s eleventh thriller became deeply personal after his father and his wife were both diagnosed with cancer. He began to wonder: how far would someone go to save the person he loves?
Eli James is Chief of Staff to the newly elected President Lionel Cantrell, his boyhood friend. What the rest of the world doesn’t know is Cantrell has cancer. Cantrell’s diagnosis and treatment are top secret, but when his condition inexplicably improves, Eli learns the president has been taking a new miracle drug. Then Eli’s daughter Bella receives bad news: she, too, has cancer, a particularly deadly and fast-moving form. Eli wants the new drug for her, but getting it isn’t so easy.
As Bailey explains, “The government is hiding the cure for cancer, and the chief of staff, Eli James, must steal it to save his daughter’s life. He and his family flee to New Mexico to come under the protection of the most ruthless land baron in the country.”
Of the land baron, Bailey says, “I felt like we needed a human monster to deal with the fictional monstrous government initiative in this story. I wanted readers to be thinking and questioning, who is the real monster?”
As Eli fights to bring the new drug to his daughter, they learn a billion-dollar conspiracy will stop at nothing to suppress the drug, which if released, would up-end the entire cancer treatment industry.
“The scenes when Eli and his wife Dale first find out about Bella’s diagnosis were difficult, as Eli’s emotions mirrored mine during those awful days when Dad and my wife Dixie were going through their treatment,” Bailey says. Sadly, his father passed away, but fortunately, his wife has survived. “The ‘Waiting Room’ scene was particularly gut-wrenching because that’s how I feel every time my wife goes in for a scan. However, there was also something therapeutic about putting those feelings on the page. The conversations with other family members in waiting rooms while Dad and Dixie were undergoing scans created a lot of the fodder for this story.”
Bailey goes on to explain, “Eli’s situation is impossible. While he is devoted to his best friend and his country, his greatest love is his daughter. Once he learns of Bella’s diagnosis, he becomes every parent facing an absolute worst nightmare, and he will do anything and everything he can to save her.”
Of course, like every thriller author, Bailey keeps up with the latest developments in the field. “For The Boomerang, the fact that new drugs are being tested will only intensify the speculation surrounding possible cures and conspiracies. During my waiting room conversations, what I heard was a lot of distrust, agitation and frustration about what was out there. From a personal standpoint, I am thrilled that new medications are being tested. But will they get to the people that need them soon enough? I hope so.”
To sum up, Bailey says, “I really enjoyed the chase feel to this story and the political maneuvering the characters had to engage in. It was fun and challenging for me to write a thriller in a different genre, and I’d love to do it again. In fact, I left a bit of meat on the bone at the end for another story…”
