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Tue 26 Jun 2007

     

NOVELIST Ken McClure is getting used to the medical thrillers he writes being described as having a prophetic quality. His previous novels have predicted BSE and preempted an outbreak of flesh-eating bug necrotizing fasciitis. But the Lothians writer could scarcely believe his eyes when, having just penned his latest book The Lazarus Strain about the possibility of a deadly flu virus being released, he caught a newsflash about people dying of bird flu in Asia.

Ken recalls the scene, which happened several years ago during one of his twice-yearly breaks in The Canary Islands: "I remember I was in Tenerife and I'd just finished the book when I saw something on the news about bird flu. People were getting it and dying in Thailand and I thought 'My God, it's happened'."

The gap between writing the book and its publication yesterday was, in retrospect, perhaps rather fortuitous for the father-of-two and grandfather-of-one, who recently moved with his wife Mina from Currie to East Saltoun, East Lothian. It allowed time for bird flu to trigger enough public alarm to allay the 64-year-old's original concerns that readers might not believe flu could pose a serious enough threat.

But Ken is nothing if not sure of his facts thanks to his background as an award-winning medical scientist who began his career studying infectious diseases in the bacteriology lab of the City Hospital at Colinton Mains.

"It's my world," he shrugs. "I'm really careful that everything I say in the book could happen, even if it is extremely unlikely."

In The Lazarus Strain, Ken taps into today's underlying fear of terrorism and biochemical warfare. Al-Qaida operatives get hold of a deadly virus from a government lab and Ken's hero, high-tech crime investigator Dr Steven Dunbar, fears the terrorists plan to wreak maximum havoc by unleashing it in a public place. It slowly emerges that al-Qaida's aim is to go one step further and substitute the virus for the vaccine to wipe out a population which thinks it's being protected.

In his pristine living room of his rural retreat, Ken says that the inspiration for The Lazarus Strain - and its title, referring to a strain coming back from the dead like the biblical Lazarus - came from hearing about a group of US scientists who decided to resurrect the 1918 flu virus from the frozen tissue of First World War soldiers. The virus that wiped out 40 million people now exists in a secure lab.

"It's not something we should be happy about," says Ken. "The explanation was that if they understood more about it they would be able to combat it. In common with many people, I thought they were creating a problem just to create a solution."

The spread of the flu in 1918 sparked a ban on travel between states in the US, where they ran out of coffins and graveyards to cope with the high number of deaths. Ken believes that another outbreak of Spanish flu, as it was known, would have catastrophic potential. "It could be even worse because travel is so easy now. It would be round the world in a flash."

The softly-spoken scientist says that every year there is a new strain of flu for which a vaccine must be invented and the risk of a pandemic - whether through natural means or malicious intent - is a tangible threat.

"What came out of this reconstruction was just how similar the 1918 virus was to bird flu. Bird flu kills in the same way as the 1918 flu - your lungs fill up with blood and you choke up and die.

The link is that every time there is an outbreak of bird flu that increases the chances of a new strain emerging - the bird flu virus mutating into a type of virus that will pass from person to person. The general view is that a pandemic is a matter of when rather than if and until the killer virus appears you can't design a vaccine," he says authoritatively.

On a more upbeat note, Ken is still awaiting news on Sean Connery's interest in making a Hollywood blockbuster from his novel The Gulf Conspiracy. The author sent Connery a copy after getting a message on his answering machine from the actor, which he initially thought was his son Mike, 40, playing a prank.

More than a year on, Ken says: "As far as I know it's still in the pipeline. The guy who sells the rights is back in touch with Sean's people so I'm hopeful."

Ken, who went full-time as an author in 2000, has published 19 books. His work is translated into 23 languages and he regularly tops the bestseller lists in Poland. With the recent wave of immigration, he notes that libraries in the Capital have started stocking his books in Polish. He laughs modestly: "As my family say, it will be on my tombstone: 'Big in Poland'."

His next book will be set in Edinburgh and will deal with cancer, he can reveal. It's a subject he knows through his scientific work as well as having been through it with members of his own family, about which he will only say: "Several people in my family have died of cancer and not just elderly relatives."

Although The Lazarus Strain tackles a subject matter that is scarily possible, Ken hopes terrorists setting loose a deadly flu virus will remain in the realms of fiction. "I have no pleasure when people say my work is prophetic. It's an unfortunate side effect," he says with a grave expression. "I write books about possibilities. This is the one I would least like to come true because of the enormous implications."

• The Lazarus Strain by Ken McClure is published by Allison & Busby in hardback for £19.99 and in paperback for £9.99.

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