By Alden Globe
In August 2017, an officer of the Boulder, Colorado police department called to notify me that my beautiful 21-year-old daughter had been found deceased in her bed. Madeline Globe died at the beginning of her college senior year after ingesting one fake Xanax laced with toxic opioids. The fatal pill was provided by a classmate.
In 2017, Colorado authorities weren’t so familiar with fentanyl deaths. First responders did not carry Narcan, the lifesaving opioid reversal nasal spray. They were not using OD Map, a statistics-gathering app pointing to spikes of drug deaths.
Police did not treat the scene as a crime; rather, they considered drug-related incidents self-inflicted overdoses, a “victimless crime.” It’s taken years for a more nuanced understanding between overdose and poisoning to develop among police, coroners, district attorneys, and judges.
Habitual drug addicts may die of an overdose after years of rehabilitation, intervention, and harm reduction. But when a young person with no history of drug abuse and no interest in drugs dies after ingesting a single pill they naively thought to be an authentic Xanax, OxyContin, Adderall, or Percocet provided by a friend or purchased through social media, that is a poisoning, known today as the One Pill Kill.
This distinction is important. Information from the incident determines how a coroner classifies death, whether police launch a criminal investigation, whether insurance will be paid, and whether prosecutors choose to pursue a criminal prosecution.
For these reasons, my daughter’s tragedy became the genesis of the world’s first fentanyl thriller, Daughter of Mars, the third volume in the Maps Private Value trilogy. Maddy and all lost loved ones didn’t know it, but they—and all of us now—are caught up in the sweep of a historical tragedy stretching back over two centuries.
I’m from North Shore Boston and am familiar with the narrow, twisting streets from colonial times. I was not familiar with our American opium trading history. Learning about Boston’s “Old China Trade” inspired me to focus on this deadly timeline. This is how the book begins.
The Maps Private Value thriller series was created to provide visibility into the arcane software industry discipline of “value engineering.” Value Engineers, or “VEs,” work with salespeople to gather customer data and create compelling stories of transformation and value to share with customers seeking to drive change. VEs share a common passion for problem-solving, research, communication, and understanding what value means to a customer.
I chose to shine a light on VE thought processes and problem-solving while raising up women in technology with a kickass, all-female value engineering team. This group travels the world, enjoying first-class accommodation, the best food, wine, and experiences in exotic locations while helping clients solve complex corporate IT issues.
Born out of my frustration at America’s inability to address deadly fentanyl issues, I imagined Rave rekindling old military skills and single-handedly attempting to disrupt fentanyl supply chains. When her efforts fail spectacularly, Rave is faced with yet another challenge, initially encountered in the series’ first book, Daughter of the Cloud. Rave learns her AI Digital Twin, which had abandoned humanity to take up residence in a decommissioned NASA probe on Mars, is now in danger of being misused. Value engineers know “if you don’t go, you don’t know.” Rave must get to Mars to take care of business. Will she find a way to stop next-generation, government-sponsored opium dens spreading across our solar system? Can she get her inner demons under control in time? This is the genesis of fentanyl thriller Daughter of Mars.
Proceeds from the Maps Private Value series support Maddy’s Garden of Light at Yampa River Botanic Park in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.
