Interview with Ken McClure

Following the publication of his latest novel, The Lazarus Strain, we caught up with East Lothian writer Ken McClure.

Your earlier novels, such as Crisis and Chameleon have been scarily prescient... How worried are you about bird flu? You talk a lot in The Lazarus Strain about how possible it is - or is not - to be prepared for a flu epidemic or pandemic.

It's not really bird flu we should be worried about, it's the very real possibility that the bird flu virus will mutate to a form which will pass from human to human. The genome of the bird flu virus is very similar to the pandemic strain of flu which swept the globe in 1918, suggesting that only a small mutation would be required. The more outbreaks of bird flu we have, the more likely the mutation is to happen. That is why it's so important to stamp them out as quickly as possible. The best method of defence against virus diseases is vaccination but it's not possible to prepare a vaccine against a strain that does not yet exist. Antiviral drugs are in their infancy and have so many drawbacks that their efficacy is questionable.

What starts as an attack on an animal research lab becomes a major terrorist attach on the UK, and the book itself races along at a fair pace. When you are writing a book like The Lazarus Strain, do you start with the science or the story first?

I always start with the science. I usually come across a story - often obscure! - which interests or alarms me and I'll investigate thoroughly to establish the facts. If I'm still interested, I just might graft fiction on to the factual basis to come up with a thriller which is a mixture of the two. In the case of The Lazarus Strain, it was a report that American scientists had decided to resurrect the pandemic flu virus from tissue taken from dead soldiers and kept frozen since the end of the 1914-18 war. I thought this was a crazy thing to do.

You're obviously not afraid to tackle the big subjects - given the secrecy and denials around Gulf War Syndrome, where you ever afraid to publish The Gulf Conspiracy?

No, after doing the research for the book, I was so angered by the treatment handed out to sick Gulf War veterans by successive UK governments that it never occurred to me. This of course, could be construed as stupidity and I suspect that I'm not on the MOD's Christmas card list.

You have been praised in the past for the way in which you combine science and fiction. How do you get that balance right? You must know a lot more about the science than appears in your novels.

I have to bite the bullet and concede that it is quite acceptable in our society to know nothing at all about science. No one will think any the less of you if you throw up your hands and say, 'Don't blind me with science', at the mere mention of DNA. It would however be a very different story if you professed a similar ignorance of things artistic and came out with, 'Who's Renoir anyway?' or, 'Keats, what team does he play for?' Accordingly (and reluctantly!) I keep the science to a minimum and only explain what the reader has to take on board for the purposes of the story.

Why did you turn from medical researcher to full-time novelist?

Not my idea! The Medical Research Council ended funding for our unit at Edinburgh University in 2000. To stay in science would have meant for me a change of research topic and probable relocation to either Cambridge or London. I had no heart for either so I became a full time writer.

How much of Ken McClure is in Steven Dunbar?

Steven's every waking thought is Ken McClure's. I hope he doesn't mind being used in this way but on the other hand (and with apologies to AS) ... he never phones, he never writes.

What next for Dr Steven Dunbar, and your other novels?

I have two things on the go at the moment. One is a novel about cancer and cancer research - which seems to have become a profession in its own right. The other is a new action adventure for Steven Dunbar to be called White Death.