The Pinochet Plot

Published May 1, 2018

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Review: 

"Robinson’s shocking page-turner elaborately weaves historical figures and events into a mind-blowing whodunit that will leave readers on the edge of their seats. Interspersed throughout the mystery are informative details that round out the historical fiction work." - San Francisco Book Review

By David Myles Robinson

​I completed my newest book, THE PINOCHET PLOT, almost three years ago, which illustrates how painfully slow (for authors) the writing-to-publishing process can be. In the meantime, I completed two more novels, SON OF SAIGON, and TROPICAL DOUBTS, which will both be published this year. So I apologize in advance for coming at you three times this year to market my books, but hopefully you will enjoy them all. All three are very different.
                  
THE PINOCHET PLOT is somewhat political in that it involves some interesting and disturbing times in US history, and the plot of the novel, by necessity, had to be political in order for the fictional conspiracy to make sense. It was a fun and sometimes unsettling novel to research in the way that crazy reality can sometimes overshadow even the most off-the-wall fictional scenarios. My research into the CIA sponsored drug experimentation program, MKULTRA, and then into the CIA’s involvement with the brutal Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, disclosed such outrageous behavior that I decided to try to make the fictional part of my story even more outrageous than reality, although frankly, I’m not sure that was possible.
                 
 I also played around with various layers to the storyline in PINOCHET. There is Will’s quest for the truth about his father’s murder; the sad realization of his mother’s life of fear and anger; the horrifying discovery of a national political conspiracy; and the love story between Will and Cheryl. Interspersed throughout, I employed a device I remember Kurt Vonnegut (one of my favorite authors) sometimes using, which was for the author to step away from the story at certain moments to speak directly to the reader, generally to educate or remind the reader about real facts, such as suicide rates, welfare fraud, and our own depressing history of oppression and even genocide of our Native Americans.
                  
What I’ve thought about, given the fact that I completed the novel well before Trump was elected, was how I would have handled some of the political diatribes by the murdered liberals had I had current events to play with. As I write this, I’m thinking about an article I read just this morning in which certain journalists are actually afraid for their lives, and the lives of their families, as they have been getting death threats and other forms of scary harassment from angry Trump supporters. One wonders how outrageous my fictional conspiracy will turn out to be.
                  
My next novel, SON OF SAIGON, is what my agent described as a “Boomer buddy” story, as two older guys (70ish), best of friends, set out on a quest to find the son the one friend never knew he had. The story itself is fun and suspenseful, but my main goal was to highlight the reincarnation of both men’s lives with the introduction of an intriguing quest, adventure, and yes, even love.
                  
​The third novel to be published toward the end of this year is another in my Pancho McMartin legal thriller series. TROPICAL DOUBTS starts out with Pancho taking on a medical malpractice case for an old family friend. It is an area of law he doesn’t really practice, but his friend is insistent. Before long, however, Pancho finds himself embroiled in both the med mal case and a related murder case.