Author Interview with Theodore Jerome Cohen

Today we're talking with Theodore Jerome Cohen, author of Death By Wall Street: Rampage of the Bulls


FQ: Buy, Sell, or Hold? That is one major question that anyone interested in stocks must consider. There are also considerations authors need to deal with when writing a book. Perhaps you could tell us what they were and what motivated you to write your fictional exposé, Death by Wall Street?


What motivated me was my anger over how Wall Street has ‘captured’ the SEC over the last ten years or so and how the pharmaceutical industry has ‘captured’ the FDA over the same time period. In the case of the former, it has resulted in a Federal agency that couldn’t find the likes of Bernie Madoff even after Harry Markopolos stuck their nose in ‘that dung heap’ repeatedly for almost a decade. I also documented and reported case after case of market manipulations involving stocks in the biotech universe to the SEC’s Enforcement Division over the last several years, about which it did nothing. Apparently, the people at the SEC were too busy watching porn on their computers (documented in the press and cited in one of the book’s footnotes) or preparing their resumes for submission to the major Wall Street firms to do their jobs. In the case of the FDA, I have repeatedly watched as that agency approved waivers for consultants to participate in advisory committees, where they would sit in judgment of drugs that had been submitted to the agency for approval. The only problem was, many of these people were working on the development of competing drugs. They shouldn’t have been within a country mile of the advisory committees on which they sought, and ultimately were granted, a seat. There is more truth to this novel that one would think. If you want to read a real-world example of what the book reveals, all you have to do is go to www.deepcapture.com and key the “Michael Milken and Dendreon” hot button at the top. This will take you to the Dendreon Story by Mark Mitchell. The story also is accessible through the novel’s page on my web site, www.theodorecohennovels.com . [Full disclosure: I have owned shares in Dendreon Corporation since 2006.]


FQ: You mention that you had “wanted to write this book for 10 years.” Could you briefly tell us a bit about why it took so long and could you give us a glimpse into some of the manipulative practices you’ve observed on Wall Street, particularly with the biotech stocks?


The first question is easy to answer: I didn’t start writing books until two years ago, so the novel simply had to wait. But in the meantime, I did write numerous editorial and other expository pieces on the subjects cited in the book that were posted to several web sites (e.g., Seeking Alpha) and message boards (Investor Village, Yahoo!, Raging Bull, and so forth).


As for manipulative practices, one that stands out in my mind, and that I articulated in the novel, concerns the manipulation of a stock’s closing price in the days leading up to options expiration (the Saturday following the third Friday of every month). I can’t go into detail for legal reasons, but in 2002, a major brokerage house issued a negative analyst report on a biotech stock that contained no new information. The report was issued just days before options were set to expire and was timed to drop the stock below a certain option’s strike price. The intent was to ensure that the brokerage house didn’t have to go into the market and buy stock to settle their options account, where they had considerable exposure. I knew that they were in a bad position from having tracked the growth of their short position in the biotech stock of interest in the months leading up to this event. Sure enough, when the market closed on that Friday, the price was safely below the strike price that would have triggered the need for the brokerage house to purchase stock in the open market. I documented everything in a letter to Chairman Pitt of the SEC. He didn’t even give me the courtesy of a reply. I then sent the material to Hon. Eliot Spitzer. I was told (privately, by a third party) that he used the information to take legal action against, and fine, the brokerage house. The SEC still is asleep at the switch. Today, it’s Hon. Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who is doing battle in the fight against insider trading and the hedge fund industry. The SEC is missing in action! For my money, they are a totally worthless agency and should be disbanded. Anyone who thinks the SEC is protecting the American Public is smoking something!


FQ: In Death by Wall Street, Alexa, a forensic analyst “specializing in stock market manipulation,” claims that “There is no question in my mind that these people have been manipulating the market in Barranger and other companies’ stock for several years.” Do you see this happening in “real” life and what made you come to your conclusion?


There is no question that stocks are being manipulated. I have witnessed this especially in the biotech universe, an area in which I have specialized for 30 years. Let’s talk generalities first. As I say in my novel, the chances of a drug making it through the FDA approval cycle are about one in ten. Here’s what the character ‘Steve Jacobs’ told ‘Detective Lou Martelli’ about the process:


“Look. All drugs go through three FDA-mandated phases of testing that must be performed before they can be approved for use by humans. Phase I trials are intended to gauge safety, Phase II trials look at the effectiveness of the drug, and Phase III trials examine the overall benefit-risk relationship so that the FDA can develop labeling for use of the drug by physicians. The process can take up to ten years to complete. Given that timeline, you can see why it’s not unusual for companies to spend billions of dollars on the development of just a single drug. Even more depressing is the fact that for every ten drugs that enter the development cycle, nine fail somewhere along the way. And people wonder why drugs are so expensive? Someone has to pay for all those failures just to get the one winner.” (Death by Wall Street: Rampage of the Bulls, Theodore Jerome Cohen, AuthorHouse, copyright 2010)


What Wall Street loves to do in the biotech universe is bet that companies will fail to bring a drug to market by shorting the stock. In shorting, one borrows the shares and sells them. And why not do this? Nine out of ten attempts to develop new drugs will result in failure, so from a statistical standpoint, you can make money betting against success in the biotech industry. But the Street doesn’t like to wait for its money. So there are those who speed things along by manipulating biotech share prices, attempting to drive the stocks they’ve shorted into the ground. And if, by chance, they can drive a company into bankruptcy, they never have to buy those shares back (that’s called ‘covering your short’). In those cases, they get to keep all the money they made shorting the stock and they pay no taxes on their windfall profits! Again, take a look at what happened to Dendreon; it’s all laid out in the DeepCapture article. You will be amazed at who is cited as being involved in attempting to sink that company. Congress could fix the tax problem, and with it, part of the Federal Budget deficit. But then, that might anger the people that put money in our representatives’ pockets, and G_d forbid, we wouldn’t want the upstanding people who represent us in Washington to go without! Do I sound jaded?


FQ: Alexa also stated that the “pharmaceutical industry has figured out a way to get around these pesky little problems and defeat any attempts by Congress and others to ‘follow the money.’” She was discussing how doctors (university-based clinicians) and others can actually be surreptitiously paid by the pharmaceutical industry. Can you explain this process?


Yes, of course. Actually, it’s explained in the book together with figures. Drug companies can't pay university-based clinicians directly for their work—ethical concerns and the like prohibit it. But Big Pharma can get money to university personnel working on their drug trials in two ways. The first way is for a drug company to contract with the general administrative office of a medical school. The contract they put in place is essentially a ‘grant’ to a specific department in which the clinical trial will be operated. A variant on this method is for the drug company to contract with one of hundreds of clinical research organizations—or CROs, as they are called—to run a clinical trial. Then, the CRO will put the grant in place with the general administrative office of a medical school. Either way, some of the money trickles down to the intended recipients. When those consultants go to fill out their waiver requests to participate in FDA advisory committees, the true source of the money is masked. The FDA knows what is going on, but so far, it hasn’t taken action to stop it. The people responsible just wink and nod. There are people in Congress who have been pushing to correct the problem, but it hasn’t garnered the support that it should, probably because people are being bought off by the pharmaceutical industry through campaign contributions. We do, after all, have the best government that money can buy!


FQ: You said you have been an “investor with more than 50 years’ experience.” Is there one particular instance of what you perceived as medical malfeasance in the trading of biotechnology stocks that was particularly striking and why?


No, I can’t say I’ve ever witnessed ‘medical malfeasance’. I attempt to identify and invest in companies that tell a compelling development story and whose drugs fill a major medical need. This has resulted in many missteps, to be sure, because as I’ve noted above, failures far outnumber successes. But actual ‘medical malfeasance’, no.


FQ: Death by Wall Street is not “just” a book for you. It obviously carries quite a bit of emotional weight. Perhaps you’d like to talk about this and if any of these events described in the book have impacted your life in any way.


Yes, it’s very personal because the events in the book are based, in part, on my experiences in biotech investing, particularly those of the last 10 years. I have, for the last three years, been one of several rather vocal people who have attempted to push the SEC, HHS (Office of the Inspector General), and the FDA into investigating certain individuals who I felt were sufficiently conflicted as to have impaired their judgment and delayed the approval of Dendreon’s immunotherapeutic treatment, Provenge, for end stage prostate cancer. (The treatment now has been approved.) When I didn’t get anywhere with the SEC Enforcement Division, I filed a formal complaint against that office with the SEC’s Office of the Inspector General. As well, I asked for a complete investigation into the April 2009 Bear Raid on Dendreon’s stock…a raid that saw the stock drop for $24.50 to $7.50 in 75 seconds. Importantly, someone posted on a Yahoo! message board that the raid would occur 30 minutes from the time of posting. Sure enough…Bam! Down the stock went. The SEC and NASD did nothing. Sen. Grassley asked for all of my evidence of malfeasance in the Dendreon matter during the summer of 2009, and he, too, called for a complete investigation. In the end, the SEC OIG refused to investigate my complaint about the conflicts of interest and pushed my complaints about the Bear Raid over to…(wait for it)…3, 2, 1: the Enforcement Division. (This is like asking the fox with chicken feathers in his whiskers what happened to the chicken!) We do know that the Enforcement Division has completed the investigation requested by Grassley (and me, via the SEC OIG (see the footnotes in the novel)) and has forwarded their Report to the SEC Chairwoman. But the Chairwoman’s Office refuses to release the Report under the Freedom of Information Act. So much for transparency.


FQ: If you want your readers to take away one thing from this book, what exactly would you want them to discover, to feel?


I want them to understand that their finances and health are being impacted every day by the fact that two agencies of the Federal government, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have been ‘captured’ by the very industries these agencies are supposed to regulate. And unless and until this situation is corrected, they and our nation are in jeopardy.


To learn more about Death By Wall Street: Rampage of the Bulls please visit our website and read the review at: Feathered Quill Book Reviews. You can also learn more about the book at the author's website at: www.theodorecohennovels.com

Author Interview with Theodore Jerome Cohen

Today we're talking with Theodore Jerome Cohen, author of End Game: Irrational Acts, Tragic Consequences.


FQ: The first book in the Antarctic Murders Trilogy, Frozen in Time: Murder at the Bottom of the World, begins with the 16th Chilean Expedition to the Antarctic and the third book, End Game: Irrational Acts, Tragic Consequences, ends with the 20th. Obviously you, as a participant in the 16th, would be highly interested in these expeditions. Can you tell us what happened during these expeditions and what progress, if any, happened in this time frame?


I only participated in the 16th Chilean Expedition. When I returned to Madison, Wisconsin, I completed my work on the gravity survey we performed in the Antarctic and prepared and published the results in the Journal of Geophysical Research. At that point, I joined Dr. Robert P. Meyer’s UW-Madison team that was performing crustal seismology studies of the North American upper crust and began work on a PhD in seismology. This kept me pretty busy, and I didn’t see much of the others from the Geophysical and Polar Research Center who went with me to Chile in 1961—Drs. Robert Dott, Jr., Martin Halpern, and Kevin Scott. But we remain in contact…often daily, by e-mail. I completed my PhD in 1966 and moved on with my life. What happens in the Antarctic Murders Trilogy after my return to Madison in 1962 is pure fiction. I never did follow the progress made by the Chilean expeditions that followed the one in which we participated.


FQ: Your primary career, aside from authoring and presenting scientific papers, was not a literary one. Many people are sure to be curious about your work in the scientific realm. Perhaps you'd like to share with us what you actually did after you left the Antarctic.


Long story short, as they say, I completed my PhD in 1966, and spent two years as an officer in the US Army—Captain, Corps of Engineers—fulfilling the obligation I incurred under the Reserve Officers’ Training Corp (ROTC) Program. I then worked in the fields of defense, homeland security, and anti-terrorism, and communications-electronics as a scientist, engineer, corporate officer, and lastly, consultant, for several firms in the greater Washington, DC, area. We left Washington in the spring of 2006, and moved to Bucks County, PA, where we now make our home. Though I’ve been writing all my life, both as a vocation and avocation, the latter primarily focused on articles, columns, and interviews in the field of Amateur Radio, I didn’t start writing novels until 2009, with Full Circle, of course, being my first.


FQ: This trilogy has excited and intrigued many people, including your own family. Naturally family members tend to applaud when a family member is first published, but you have received many outside kudos. Of all the applause, which pair of clapping hands has tickled you the most?


Wow! That’s a difficult question. Thanks for letting me off the hook on family members. But on the outside, I’d have to say Bernard (Bernie) Garfield, former Principal Bassoonist with the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1957 to 2000. He congratulated me on writing the trilogy, which he likened to writing my ‘first concerto’. A concerto, of course, is a musical work in three parts or movements. But here’s what tickled me the most. When he finished reading End Game, he sent me a note: “Ted, in every successful musical composition there is a great start, an interesting and exciting middle, and most importantly, a successful ending. Well, the Epilogue of End Game is very satisfying. The tale is now finally completely over, and I'm at peace with all the characters.”

FQ: Most writers tend to develop idiosyncratic ways of writing. For example, some devote one hour to writing every morning or think writing on yellow tablets is the way to go. Do you have any special habits you've adopted as you've begun to write or are you keeping secrets that only the Chilean Naval Intelligence could crack? Fess up!


Well, I won’t make you wait for Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks to reveal my secrets. When I write, I just sit down at my computer and type. I usually outline the book by putting down chapter headings, though chapters do get added as I go along if it seems appropriate. But basically, I write…and write…and write! Sometimes four hours a day, sometimes eight, sometimes even twelve. I have written as many as 5000 words in one day, and, in the case of my novel Death by Wall Street, for example, which really was my fourth novel, I wrote 80% of the book in two weeks. Then, my efforts focus on editing and refinement, meeting with my developmental editor, discussing edits with a few close friends, and so forth, before I finally submit the manuscript to AuthorHouse for publication. The process is very intense. I simply can’t stretch it out. Frankly, I like to work on one thing, finish it, and move on.


FQ: The thrilling finale of End Game comes immediately after Gustav Mahler's final movement of his Symphony No. 5. Only someone who has a passion for Mahler can describe his work (in particular the pacing of No. 5) only if one is a devout fan. Are you? Pray tell us about your passion for music.


Yes, of course. I do love music. All genres, in fact, but especially classical music. Now, more than ever. One of my greatest regrets in life is that I did not continue playing the violin after I left high school. But as readers of my semi-autobiographical novel “Full Circle” know, life intruded, and my father’s dream that I would be a concert violinist never were realized. Fortunately, life sometimes gives you a second chance, so returning to the violin over four years ago has brought me great joy and fulfillment. Today, I am playing the violin at a level I never dreamed possible, thanks to my teacher, John Aumann. And I was thrilled in 2007, when Maestro Daniel Kujala, Music Director of The Bryn Athyn Orchestra, asked me to join the BAO. Dan is the man who introduced me to the great music of Gustav Mahler, a personal favorite of his. Through the performances of the BAO, I have come to love Mahler, as well as Berlioz, Copland, Dvorak, Moussorgsky, Mozart, Saint-Saens, among many, many others. It seemed only natural to incorporate classical music into my novels, and Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 was ideally suited for “End Game” because of its length and the pacing of its movements. I hope the readers are as antsy as Captain Valderas as waits for the concert to end…a concert he had been waiting for months to attend, but now, can’t enjoy because…well, I’ll let your readers learn why.


FQ: Putting aside your own work for a moment, let's think about other authors. If you were to head to a book store (unnamed of course), which section would you head over to immediately? If you could add just five of your favorite authors' works to your basket, who would they be?


Good question. I tend to read a variety of books and various categories. I love the Aubrey-Maturin series of novels by Patrick O'Brian, set during the Napoleonic Wars, and still have some to read. The writings of Harold Kushner are quite inspirational, and give a person much to think about. I even enjoy reading the classics now and then…things from the pen of Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll. I guess what I find most interesting about them is that they can be read on so many different levels. Frankly, I just select books that pique my interest from time to time. Now I’m reading Sean Carroll’s From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time and Robert Spaethling’s Mozart’s Letters, Mozart’s Life.


FQ: You have been a ham radio operator for many years and have also have co-authored a book entitled The NEW Shortwave Propagation Handbook. Just have to ask ... have you Worked All States? Any interesting contacts you'd like to talk about? Did you have to continually shout to get that one last contact you needed? Have you contacted Pitcairn Island by any chance?


I’ve been licensed since November 1952, and currently hold an Extra Class license and the call sign N4XX. Yes, I’ve worked all of the United States and just about every country on Earth. I never did work North Korea, though, but then, I’m sure I’m not the only one. Some of the more interesting contacts I’ve had were with the Kings of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. And yes, I’ve made contact with Pitcairn Island on many occasions. Most of those contacts were with a man named Tom Christian, VR6TC, who is a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian of HMS Bounty. I have to laugh…you must know a few Radio Amateurs. There were many times when I was literally shouting into the microphone to get that last watt of power into the antenna so that I could be heard over the other stations calling an operator who was on the air from some godforsaken place I needed to contact for an award. Truth be told, I prefer using the International Morse code over talking into a microphone. Until I went off the air in 2005 because we moved to a community that won’t allow me to put up a tower for my antennas, most of my on-air activities from 1990 to 2005 were in code. I just loved the challenge. Anyone can talk into a microphone, but it takes real skill to communicate in code at speeds of 35 words per minute.


FQ: Back to your own work after a bit of bookstore browsing and shouting at your ham radio contacts. End Game appears to be doing quite well at the moment, a fact that no doubt excites you. Are you hard at work writing again (see question number four) or are you going to sit back and relax a while before you put your pen to the paper so to speak?


I’m taking it easy for now. Five novels in 14 months is rough, both on the mind and the pocketbook. So, I’m going to take a break here, do some reading, play the violin, do a little traveling, and just enjoy life!
In the meantime, please be sure to visit my website at: TheodoreCohenNovels.com


To learn more about End Game: Irrational Acts, Tragic Consequences please visit our website and read the review at: Feathered Quill Book Reviews.

Author Interview with Theodore Jerome Cohen

Today we're talking with Theodore Jerome Cohen, author of Unfinished Business: Pursuit of an Antarctic Killer.



FQ: In Unfinished Business we quickly cut to the chase and witness Captain Muñoz exacting revenge for the death of his good friend Lieutenant-Commander Cristian Barbudo.  Muñoz is a very cunning psychopath.  Did you have to ‘study up’ on psychopathic behavior in order to develop his character?

I know this is going to get me in trouble, but the answer is ‘no’. It took me a long time to develop the captain’s personality . . . I spent hours (and hours!) thinking about him. He did not start out being the complex psychopath you see in Book II of the Trilogy, or will see in Book III. In fact, in the initial drafts of Book I, Frozen in Time, he was a ‘nicer’ person. But soon, I realized that the novel lacked energy and conflict. True, we got some insight into Muñoz’ character through that little fútbol story in Book I, but his character really needed to be strengthened.  If I was going to have any chance of drawing the reader into what I hoped he or she would see as a thriller, Muñoz needed to be much more complex, to have a sinister side, and to show he could be both tough and ruthless if the circumstances required it. You saw he was a risk-taker in Book I by his willingness to jeopardize his ship, the Lientur, and crew when he turned around in the middle of a hurricane and went back for Barbudo and the American Scientist, Ted Stone. As you recall, they were trapped in a crevasse on the Continental Glacier. So, the stage was set to explore the full dynamics of Muñoz personality.

Now, when I wrote Frozen in Time, I had no idea that it would become Book I of a Trilogy. It originally was written as a standalone novel. And it still is one. The idea of doing a trilogy only came to me after my two daughters, Missy and Stephanie, repeatedly asked questions regarding ‘what happened?’ I guess some people just aren’t comfortable with post-modern novels, for which batteries aren’t supplied and some home assembly is required. So, I wrote Books II and III . . . simultaneously, so that I would have the ‘hooks’ in Book II that I would need for Book III. Fortunately, I had laid the groundwork in Book I for the other books, especially when it came to Muñoz’ character.

FQ: In your first novel in this series, Frozen in Time, you mentioned the Chilean earthquake of 1960.  Your book was in print, but not in distribution, when another quake of the magnitude 8.8 occurred on February 27, 2010, within a 1,000 mile range of the first one.  It may seem a bit prophetic or quirky that you brought up the subject so many years after the event just as another was happening.  Do you believe in prescience?


No, that was pure chance. There are tens of thousands of earthquakes that occur every year around the globe. Just look at the large number of earthquakes that have occurred this year. By the way, the royalties (and then some) for Frozen in Time are being donated to AmeriCares in Stamford, CT, for Chilean earthquake relief. By the way, a woman was killed at SeaWorld by an orca around the time the book was released. That, too, was pure chance. Just unbelievable.

FQ: On one level, Unfinished Business is the stuff that CSI fans are quite interested in, yet during the time the novel was set in, crime scene technology was a far cry from what it is today.  Naval Intelligence, albeit Chilean or American, was probably similar.  Did you pattern the investigatory work of Captain Mateo Valderas and Lieutenant-Commanders Antonio Del Río on the work of people you knew?


Well, I’m a big fan of the CSI series, so I have to say I was influenced by the CSI shows. But of course, the story took place in 1962, so I had to keep the technical side of the investigation at a very primitive level compared to what we have today. But everything was thorough checked out vis-à-vis such things as VIN numbers, blood tests, and so forth. I made sure that if something was mentioned in the novel, it actually existed at the time. So while the reader may have gotten a sense that the action was CSI-based, the science was based on what could be done in the early 1960s.

FQ: In this work there are many coins that present cryptic clues that the two Naval Intelligence officers need to think about in order to find Muñoz.  The presentation may strike the reader as being rendered Da Vinci style.  Were you influenced by Dan Brown’s novels?


A little. I read Dan Brown’s novels and saw the movies based on his books. As a scientist, I loved the mysteries associated with the various cryptic clues he embedded in his stories. You will notice that coins played an important role in Frozen in Time. I spent no few lines talking about the various types of gold coins—US, European, South American—that had been stolen from the branch of the Banco Central de Chile. I needed something ‘material’—a ‘token’, if you will—to associate with Muñoz, and that ‘something’ is a coin . . . or several coins, depending on the circumstances. He flips them through his fingers, plays with them in his pocket, and so forth. I just decided to carry that idea further by using coins as a way for the captain to taunt his pursuers. The whole trilogy, after all, revolves around a bank heist and the theft of approximately US$12 million in currency, negotiable securities, gold, and jewelry. So, it seemed a natural to focus on coins throughout the story. By the way, you even see coins appear in Frozen in Time in the discussion of inflation in South America. So, being a guy who used to collect coins as a kid and, at times, as an adult, it seemed like coins would be an ideal way in inject clues into Unfinished Business.


The particular set chosen, British coins—Cromwell Crowns, Durham House groats, and the like—provided a wealth of Latin inscriptions. It was fun selecting various engravings and embedding them in the story as clues. I’m sure Captain Muñoz was having the same fun. After all, don’t all authors put themselves in their character’s minds?

FQ: Still on the subject of coins.  There were many interesting rarities presented.  For example, we see obscure, but valuable coins such as the 1741 Brazilian 400 reis gold coin and a Pontefract siege coin from 1648.  Most people would not know about these coins.  Are you a numismatist or did you have to do some research?


As I mentioned, I used to collet coins as a kid. Later, as a adult, I collected Civil War token. So, I always maintained an interest in coins and tokens. In writing Unfinished Business, however, I did quite a bit of research before penning—that always sounds to much better than saying ‘typing’—the portions involving coins. The portions that involved the British coins took the most research because I needed to find just the right set of inscriptions for the circumstances in which the Latin engravings were to be used.

FQ: Some sentences/paragraphs a writer pens reflect their inner thoughts.  One you wrote was striking: “The afternoon had been a sobering reminder of how fragile life is and of the impact the death of one good man can have on family and community.”  Did this remind you of such a person in your own memory banks?


Yes. Susan, my wife—who also is ‘Susan Stone’ in the trilogy—and I lost a very good friend in the invasion of Baghdad during the first Gulf War of 2003. He was US Army Captain James F. “Jimmy” Adamouski, who was killed when the Black Hawk helicopter he was piloting was shot down on Wednesday, April, 2, 2003. Jimmy was only 29 years old. His dad and I knew each other for many years, and we often visited Jimmy at West Point when his dad and I were traveling on business in the NJ-NY area. Susan and I danced at Jimmy’s wedding, and we often sent packages to him, wherever he was deployed around the world. He had been accepted at Harvard Business School, and was supposed to begin classes later in 2003. His death was a shock to everyone who knew him, of course, and it had a significant impact on us.

You may find it interesting to know that I paid homage to Jimmy in my novel Death by Wall Street” Rampage of the Bulls, which recently was published by AuthorHouse. I named the hero after him. It’s not the name so much—Louis Martelli—but the fact that the hero is the only survivor of a Black Hawk crash in the first Gulf War.

FQ: Most likely the adventure of your life was when you participated in the 16th Chilean Expedition to the Antarctic.  Were there any more events in your life that you were especially exciting or life altering?


Certainly facing death has a way of making you grow up quickly! Both ‘Grant Morris’—the scientist I was supporting—and I nearly lost our lives on two occasions. Both involved getting back to and on Chilean naval ships that were standing off shore, waiting to pick us up after storm had arisen while we were working on the North Antarctic Peninsula. In both cases, the wind, wind-driven waves, rain, sleet, and snow almost sunk the small launches we were using. The ship couldn’t come in to pick us up because of the icebergs close to the continent, so there was no alternative except for us to head to sea. Even when we managed to find the ship, using our field compasses, of all things, getting off the launches, which I described in Frozen in Time, was a hair-raising experience. So, as I said, it tends to make you grow up pretty quickly. Up to then, I hadn’t experience anything but the tranquil life of a college student in Madison, WI, where the biggest problems usually centered on final exams and things like that.

FQ: You said you started writing when you were in the Antarctic.  Many people start to write or paint, yet when life’s obligations such as family and career necessitate putting up the pen or brushes, they forget about their artistic ventures.  Tell us about why you decided to start writing again. 


Actually, I started writing Frozen in Time in Antarctica. It started out as a short story that I had intended to submit to Playboy magazine when I returned to the US. The magazine did then, and still does, publish avant-guarde fiction. So, with not much to do at Base O’Higgins when the wind was blowing 60 miles per hour, I wrote a short story about a man who was killed in the waters off the base by two other men while the three on a seal hunt. The story was handwritten on the back of some blank radiograms, and unfortunately, it was lost during my return to the US. I never gave it another thought, what with finishing college, going into the Army, raising a family, and earning a living. It was the job of converting the 35mm slides I had taken on that trip to jpegs that gave me the idea of writing Frozen in Time.
But more generally, I’ve been writing all my life. I have written for the scientific, engineering, and popular communications-electronics communities, including the Amateur Radio community, since the mid-1960s. And in business, I wrote countless proposals to the federal government over the last 45 years. But I didn’t start writing novels until 2009, when I wrote Full Circle: A Dream Denied, A Vision Fulfilled. This is more of a biographical novel, and chronicles my life in music, science, and engineering. I was motivated to write it based on my return to the violin after a 50-year hiatus. I originally envisioned the story more of a screenplay for, say, Hallmark Channel, or something like that. In my mind’s eye, I saw an elderly widower cleaning out the house he and his deceased wife of 60 years had lived in. In the attic, he finds his old violin . . . an instrument he hasn’t play in 50 years. He, of course, is depressed, and eventually, turns back to music, takes lessons, joins an orchestra, and finds his life renewed. Well, I don’t know how to write screenplays, and I did know what it was like to play violin as a kid, stop playing for 50 years and return to the fiddle, so I wrote the story as I lived it. That’s what’s in Full Circle. That’s where the reader first encounters Ted Stone. The is mention of the trip to Antarctica, but as I recall, it’s not more than one or two sentences.

FQ: In  Unfinished Business we don’t see ‘Ted Stone,’ the character who you patterned after yourself in Frozen in Time.  Will we be seeing him in the last book in this trilogy, End Game? Perhaps you can give us a little peek as what goes on in End Game?  Just a bit of a teaser, please!

Yes, both ‘Ted Stone’ and ‘Grant Morris’—the latter, by the way, in real life, has retired and is living the ‘good life’ 20 miles south of Lima, Peru, on the Pacific Coast—return in Book III. If you go to my new Web site, www.theodorecohennovels.com, here is what you will see regarding the novel:


About the Book:


End Game: Irrational Acts, Tragic Consequences, is Book III of the Antarctic Murders Trilogy. In many ways, it brings to an end three things: the sagas of Captain Roberto Muñoz of the Lientur, the hunt for the millions of dollars in U.S. and British cash, negotiable securities, gold coins, and jewelry stolen from the Banco Central de Chile following the Chilean Earthquake of May, 1960, and the murders that followed the robbery. Book I: Frozen in Time: Murder at the Bottom of the World, introduced American scientists Ted Stone and Grant Morris, who, while performing geological and geophysical field work with the assistance of Captain Roberto Muñoz of the Chilean auxiliary tug Lientur, were caught up in the hunt for the robbers and the spoils from the robbery, and murder. Unfinished Business: Pursuit of an Antarctic Killer, introduced Captain Mateo Valderas and Lieutenant-Commander Antonio Del Río of the Chilean Navy’s Office of Internal Affairs. Initially assigned to solve a murder in Arica, they soon found themselves facing perhaps the most vicious, cunning thief and murderer they ever encountered. The return of American scientists Ted Stone and Grant Morris to Santiago for the purpose of helping personnel of the University of Chile prepare for the 20th Chilean Expedition to the Antarctic, beginning in December 1965, jeopardizes the lives of both scientists. What ‘irrational act’ will elicit the tragic consequences that finally bring everything to an end? For the answer, read Book III: End Game: Irrational Acts, Tragic Consequences.


Does that pique your interest? There’s a free preview on the Web site.

FQ: You say you have ‘published more than 350 papers, articles, columns, essays, and interviews.’  You are a very prolific writer, but of all these works, which one are you the most proud of and why?


That’s a difficult question to answer. I love them all—after all, they are my children—but each for a different reason.  I am very proud of the Antarctic Murders Trilogy, however, because of the setting, the complexities of the characters, and the fact that I have been able to ‘exercise’, if you will, so many disparate concepts, ideas, and methodologies in telling the tale. For example, the use of footnotes and photographs in Frozen in Time, as well as the somewhat extensive use of Spanish in that same book, portions that were translated in footnotes, almost set this novel apart as a separate genre. Now, I will tell you that not everyone was thrilled with Book I. In fact, one local book reviewer, who had reviewedFull Circle and loved it, refused to review Frozen in Time because of the footnotes, photographs, my use of italics, and the like. I can understand someone not liking my books, and I’m okay with that. But I write what I like to write, so while I toned down the footnotes, photographs, and italics in Books II and III, I also eliminated all translations. Which means readers will have to wing it when it comes to the Spanish, Portuguese, and French they will encounter from time to time. Hey! I never promised you a rose garden! As well, I love Book III, End Game: Irrational Acts, Tragic Consequences, in particular, because it allowed me to bring in one of my first loves: music. The story hinges on a performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, and the agony Captain Valderas and Commander Del Río experience during the performance, knowing what is about to happen. Whoops . . . I don’t want to give too much away.
Is this enough of a tease?

To learn more about Unfinished Business: Pursuit of an Antarctic Killer please visit our website and read the review at: Feathered Quill Book Reviews.

Author Interview with Theodore Jerome Cohen

Today we're talking with Theodore Jerome Cohen, author of Frozen in Time: Murder at the Bottom of the World.

FQ: First, tell us a little about your novel, Frozen in Time.

Frozen in Time is an historical novel. It is based on real events in my life. In fact, I’ve changed my last name in the book from ‘Cohen’ to ‘Stone’ for the telling of the tale. But the truth is, the story is drawn from the pages of the diary that I kept prior to and during my work on the 16th Chilean Expedition to the Antarctic, which extended from December 1961 through March 1962. The fundamental, underlying structure of the book is factual. The reader can believe everything said regarding the trip from Madison, Wisconsin, through Miami, to Lima, Santiago, Punta Arenas, and on to the South Shetland Islands, and finally, Base O’Higgins, Antarctica. As well, everything about time at sea or on the Ice (as we call it) is factual. The descriptions of the hurricanes at sea, calving of the continental glacier, near-death experiences...they’re all true. Around all that, of course, is woven the story of the bank theft and the murders. But I suspect you are going to ask about those events below, so I no doubt will have to come clean on those later.

FQ: When Ted Stone was supposedly a young geophysics grad student he was asked to go on the expedition of a lifetime. The team he joined was a mix of very talented people from the University of Wisconsin. When you participated in the 16th Chilean Expedition to the Antarctic, we’re assuming you went with a similar team. Would you care to tell us about it?

Yes, the team was as it is described in the book. There were four of us from the University of Wisconsin. The man who asked me to join the expedition—I called him ‘Grant Morris’ in the novel—was my lab instructor for Geology at UW. We still remain in contact, as I do with the other members of the group. Today, ‘Grant’ lives just south of Lima, on the Pacific Ocean, where he’s retired and enjoying the good life. His major professor also was a member of the team, and he still teaches at UW-Madison. Another of the professor’s students, ‘David Green’ in the book, today is a world-renowned volcanologist for the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and he travels the world assisting other countries with studies of their active volcanoes. The three of them are a great bunch of guys, and we really had fun together ...still do via e-mail.

FQ: It’s sometimes a very difficult task to mix fact and fiction. For example, you talked about the Great Chilean Earthquake which occurred in May of 1960, which in fact was the largest recorded earthquake in history. In your novel you weave in two somewhat seedy characters, Raul Lucero and Eduardo Bellolio, who rifled the safety deposit boxes at the Banco Central de Chile. Were these two men a figment of your imagination or did such an incident occur?

There’s no disputing the occurrence of the earthquake. Just an unbelievable geological event, to be sure. But yes, Lucero and Bellolio were a fiction. I needed two bad guys to kick off the action, and so, I had to create them. And because in fiction there are no boundaries, I was free to make them anything I wanted them to be. I had a lot of fun doing that. If there’s time, I’ll let you in on a secret regarding them and the story, but I’ll save that for last.

FQ: Decades ago schools of fish were much more abundant than they are today. Ted was overwhelmed by the sea life off the coast of Miami, especially the fearsome looking school of “young barracuda” who petrified him. Have you ever had any experience like this?

That scene off the coast of Miami, among the barracuda, occurred exactly as I experienced it. The whole trip on the University of Miami’s boat, Shor-Clif, occurred exactly as it was described in the book. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience, at first. But once I learned that the barracuda weren’t going to bother me, I paid them no attention.

FQ: Communication on remote outposts such as the Antarctic are extremely important to the safety of any group of people. Today many of the bands are down, a fact that would make life much more difficult. Would you like to talk about your interest in ham radio?

Ham radio, or Amateur Radio, has been my hobby since I was 12 years old. My callsign today is N4XX. I received my first Amateur Radio license when I was 13 years old. I was encouraged to pursue this hobby by my mother and her oldest brother, Harry Rubinstein (ex-9EEV (SK)), who is credited with the invention of the printed circuit. Because of my love for communications-electronics, I began studies at the University of Wisconsin in EE in the mid-1950s, only to turn to Physics in 1959. I just had to know what really made the world ‘tick’. From there, I earned a BS and MS in Physics and a PhD in Geophysics, only to be drawn back to communications-electronics in the 1970s because an old friend in the industry offered me a job that was too good to turn down. I stayed in communications-electronics for the remainder of my career. I would have to say that my background in communications-electronics, together with a capability to write, shaped my professional life.

FQ: Part of Ted’s job was to take readings with the Worden gravimeter, a rare and expensive instrument. Can you tell us about the function of a gravimeter and if you have had personal experience using it?

Everything said about the Worden gravimeter in the book are my actual experiences with the instrument. Everything. That’s me talking. The gravimeter can only measure differences in the pull of gravity between two places. The absolute pull of gravity (acceleration due to gravity) at any given place was measured using a set of pendulums ‘swung’ (as it is said) by another of Dr. Woollard’s teams, at the time. All of the gravity networks worldwide were tied into the pendulum stations.

FQ: One of my favorite quotes in the book was “Chess really is nothing more than a metaphor for life itself. When the game is over, the king and the pawn both go into the same box.” What is the origin of this quote? Cristian and Ted enjoyed the game. And you?

The quote is an Italian proverb. All of the chess games described in the book actually took place between the parties described and me. But know, of course, that I did not use the other parties’ real names.

FQ: You described the horrifying weather that ships sometimes had to endure on their trips south, especially that in the ‘Banana Belt” (Bransfield Strait). Did you have to endure a hair raising, Dramamine trip or was yours smooth? Tell us about your most terrifying sea travel story if you have one.

The weather was as described. Everything described in the book regarding the weather and the seas are actual descriptions of what we experienced...almost blow-by-blow descriptions (no pun intended!). Fortunately, I did not get seasick. Nor did ‘David Green’. However, both ‘Grant Morris’ and our professor got violently ill, and both had to be strapped into their bunks. Read the story about the crossing from South America...here’s an excerpt. “Ted had been reading James A Mitchner’s Hawaii as a way to pass the time when he looked up at the chain hanging from a hook on the wall in their cabin. On it was a crucifix, which was swinging through a sixty degree arc, thirty degrees to one side, then thirty degrees to the other. I’ll take all the help I can get at this point, he thought.” (Frozen in Time: Murder at the Bottom of the World)

FQ: You related a horrifying scene of nature in action saying, “The Continental Glacier was calving before their eyes, with ice masses below where they were standing breaking off and falling into the sea.” Did you witness such a scene on your expedition? Perhaps you can tell us a bit more about this phenomenon.

This scene is described in the book as it actually happened. It was summer, of course, the Sun shown almost 24 hours every day (we were just above the Antarctic Circle), and the Continental Glacier was melting. Large crevasses would open, and near the sea, the glacier would calve, sending ice into the water. This not only created icebergs, but huge waves as well.

FQ: In passing you mention explorers such as Captain Robert F. Scott and Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton. What aspects of their lives, if any, fascinate you? Would you have loved to have been an Arctic explorer?

I was fascinated by their thirst for knowledge of what lay over the horizon. What’s out there? What has no man (or woman) seen? Unfortunately, many who tried to ‘conquer’ the Frozen Continent had no idea what it would take to do so. There’s a wonderful exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City that recounts one of the most stirring tales of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration: the contest to be the first to reach the South Pole in 1911-1912. (www.amnh.org/news/tag/south-pole/). Knowing what I know now, I think I’ve done all the exploring I want to do in Antarctic. But that said, my wife, Susan (who is in the book as Susan Stone) and I do want to visit Antarctica together, and may, during the austral summer of 2011-2012.

FQ: I was very interested in your brief discussion about good and evil and the correlation you made with order and disorder. Keep on talking! We’d like to hear more about your philosophy of life.

There are several themes that run through all of my novels. They include a respect for parents, teachers, the military/police; deception, and the role it plays in Nature, Man, and Life; the question of why bad things happen to good people; and order and disorder, which I equate, at times, to good and evil. We live in a world where disorder (entropy) is increasing. We grow old and get sick, our cars rust, buildings crumble...the universe, in short, tends towards disorder. We, as human beings, can put order to things, but only on a local scale. Thus, we can work to stay healthy, repair our cars, erect new edifices or fix old ones. I think you get the picture.

One could, in an abstract sense, look at the struggle to impose order on a local scale as the juncture between religion and science. That is, it gives man purpose in the world. (And no, this is not a sermon...what I’m about to say came about from an exchange I had with the Religion Editor of The Washington Post following the Indonesian Tsunami some years ago. He asked: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” My response was that bad things happen both to good and to bad people simply because we live in a world where entropy (disorder) is increasing. Put another way, I told him, life could not exist if entropy were constant (there was no increase or decrease of order in our lives (every day was Ground Hog Day) or entropy, across the universe, decreased (everything became ordered, in which case, for example, we could not produce waste). Basically, in the latter two cases, what would people do with their lives? A religious person would say that having bad things occur in life was the price we paid for being given life itself. In a way, we have, here, the junction of science and religion.

I sent him this parable:

I'm reminded of the joke in which a man is taking his priest through his garden, extolling the wondrous flowers and trees that he has cultivated and brought to bloom. Finally the priest can take no more and turning to the man says: "John, I know you have worked hard on this garden, but don't you think that you should give some credit to the Lord?" John thought for a moment and then said: "You might be right, father, but you should have seen this place when He was doing it Himself!"

In other words, without G_d putting disorder into the world, the gardener would have no purpose in life.

So, in a way, good and evil are part of the same story. Evil was put into our world to give purpose to our life...to make the world a better place. And perhaps good and evil are an older, better understood battle between order and disorder, dating back, as it does, to Biblical times and having religious overtones.

FQ: Frozen in Time doesn't quite fit into the typical mystery or adventure genre. How would you describe it?

How about a Dark, Supernatural Thriller? Consider this.

John Milton’s Paradise Lost

www.paradiselost.co.uk/

Satan rallies his subjects (283-621)

Satan (Lucifer), “the superior fiend”, goes to the edge of the burning lake and calls to his legions who are lying inert on its surface. Note his sarcastic humour: he asks, in effect, “Are you having a rest? Have you chosen to lie in the lake as a way of adoring God (by readily bowing to His will)?”

The devils, waking, stir themselves, fly up into air, and assemble around Satan. The chief devils are named and described:

• Moloch (crude, warlike, blustering);
• Chemos (associated with sensual, orgiastic demon worship, idolatry);
• Astarte (a female equivalent of Chemos);
• Thammuz (a fertility god, believed to die and rise to life every year; associated with rebirth of vegetation);
• Dagon (god of the Philistines, referred to in the Biblical books of Judges and 1 Samuel);
• Rimmon (referred to in the Biblical book of 2 Kings);
• Osiris, Isis, Orus (gods of Egyptian mythology), and
• Belial (a deceitful, lustful and lewd god). 

The devil host assembles in military fashion. The devils move forward, and come to a halt ready for inspection by Satan. Milton describes the martial prowess and glory they retain despite their fall, and notes how moved Satan is by this display of loyalty.

www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/poetry/paradiselost.htm#9

Now, consider Frozen in Time:

In the story, we have Raul Lucero (Lucifer) and his “lieutenant”, Eduardo Bellolio (Belial). Note that the connection to the Fallen Angles in Bellolio’s case is through his last name. Bellolio is a real Chilean name, as is Lucero.

As for Lucero:

“Among the Lientur’s complement of five 0fficers and forty enlisted men were two non-commissioned officers, Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) Raul Lucero and Chief Petty Officer (CPO) Eduardo Bellolio. They had signed on for three-year tours of duty in late 1959 and were scheduled to participate with their vessel in the 16th Expedition to the Antarctic. Though both were slightly over five feet tall, Lucero was by far the heavier—stout, actually—weighing some twenty pounds more than Bellolio. Lucero had a full head of black hair and massive, muscular arms developed over years of working in naval construction. Aside from one drooping eyelid, the result of a childhood accident, he was a fine physical condition for a man in his late thirties.

“Lucero had risen rapidly within the enlisted ranks. Though a Chief Warrant Officer, his record was not without blemishes. In mid-1954, the Navy’s Office of Internal Affairs found evidence of him apparently having facilitated the transfer of naval supplies to the Chilean black market. Lucero bragged, “The Navy couldn’t hang a thing on me.”

“He was correct. The trail left behind by whomever was responsible was so complex and convoluted that investigators never were able to determine exactly what was taken from at least two Fleet Warehouses, much less the final destinations of the items stolen. There were indications that a naval officer, as well as people outside the Navy, may have been involved. However, the evidence was so ‘thing that naval investigators came away empty-handed.

“In the end, no action was taken against Lucero or anyone else. After four years of monitoring the suspects’ activities, Internal Affairs dropped the matter.”

And Bellolio:

“Bellolio was slightly built and a year younger than Lucero. He tended to be hot-tempered and impulsive, thinking little about the consequences of his actions. Though physically agile, he bore a two-inch scar across his left cheek, a constant reminder that others were just as quick as he was with una navaja de muelle.”

…

“Both men were covered with tattoos, products of the many parlors found in every port they visited. To them, the artful mementos that adorned their bodies were signs of machismo, something to be shared proudly with their brothers-in-arms. The works of art on their bodies depicted their loves, hates, triumphs, and love of country. Lucero was particularly proud of one faded black tattoo glorifying Death that could be found high on his upper left arm.”

(In Western literature and art, fallen angels became a popular theme primarily after Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). Milton depicts a memorable Satan, Prince of the Air, who commits incest with his daughter, Sin, and they have a child, Death, who then rapes his Mother!) www.sexualfables.com/Fallen-angels-and-Miltons-Paradise-Lost.php

“Each man entered the Navy at the same time, immediately after finishing their secondary school education. However, Bellolio’s rank was two levels beneath that of Lucero’s. This was the result of a Navy Board of Inquiry that found Bellolio complicit in the knifing death of an enlisted man some two years earlier during a fight at a brothel in Valparaiso. Bellolio never would talk about it—“I was set up,” he maintained—but according to Lucero, the issue involved him making gross, lewd comments to a Yugoslavian prostitute who was dancing with another sailor. “

Again, the Fall Angle Belial was known as the most gross and lewd of the Fallen Angles.

In the novel, too, Lucero is tipped off to the fact that Lt. Commander Cristian Barbudo (first name; allusion to Christ) has picked up his trail by another Chilean Navy non-commissioned officer in Santiago, Chief Warrant Officer Gabriel Osorio (“Gabriel”, of course, is known as G_d’s “messenger”. In Frozen in Time, Osorio is named for Osiris, another of the Fallen Angles. Osorio is a real Chilean name.) It’s Osorio who sends a message to Lucero, tipping him off to the fact that Lt. Cmdr. Barbudo has picked up the trail from the theft of the Central Bank of Chile and tied it to him and Bellolio both to the theft as well as to the death of Rodríguez.

“Lucero looked around to make sure no one was in the compartment. Then he whispered, “I received a ‘condolence’ message from Gabriel Osorio—Chief Warrant Officer Osorio—this afternoon. You remember me talking about him. We was on that rescue effort with the Norwegian relief ship MS Tottan that evacuated personnel from several sites occupied by French Antarctic researchers back in 1952. We both was assigned to the Lautaro back then. It was Hell! We lost two overboard in that storm off Kerguelen Island . . . never even had a chance to look for ‘em, not that it would have done any good. They probably was drowned within seconds of hitting the water. Terrible thing it was.”

“The ship’s officers and visiting scientists had their dinners in the Captain’s Mess, and frequently Ted was seated next to Lieutenant-Commander Cristian Barbudo, or ‘Cristian,’ as he asked Ted to call him. Cristian, a deeply religious man, was just under six feet tall and physically trim, something he attributed to working out in the ship’s gym every morning before breakfast. “It gives me a chance to clear my mind after going through my radio messages,” he joked, when Ted asked how he found the time to stay in shape.

“Cristian was four years older than Ted, married, and had two beautiful daughters, Daniela and Teresa. His wife, Maria, taught in a private school located near Viña del Mar, a major seaside resort town where they had made their home for the past four years.”

So...one has to ask: Did the Devil take over the 16th Chilean Expedition to the Antarctic, and was Nature’s furious response an attempt to eject him and his lieutenants from her pristine white land at the Bottom of the World.

“On his way to the Officer’s Mess, Ted encountered the captain of the Piloto Pardo in a passageway. The man, still smartly dressed in his neatly pressed uniform but looking exhausted, took off his wire rim glasses and gently rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Shaking his head from side to side, he lamented, “I have participated in seven expeditions to the Antarctic. I have talked with my predecessors by radio. This one was by far the worst crossing in the history of Chilean Antarctic Expeditions!””

Was Cristian sacrificed in the process, his body to be delivered to the sea at some time well into the future?

“But when he looked to his left, Cristian was gone!

“Ted looked down, but Cristian was nowhere to be seen. Had he slipped over the edge in his sleep? Had he tried to make himself more comfortable, and in the process, fallen off the ledge, causing the piton to be torn from the wall simply because of the weight placed on it?

“He must have dropped hundreds of feet below the surface, thought Ted. He could be entombed for decades, if not centuries, frozen in time until the glacier, moving slowly to the sea, gives up his body to the ocean in one final act of Deliverance.”

Finally, when Lucero and Bellolio killed one another (if that’s really what happened . . . we don’t know what part Muñoz played), one is tempted to ask: was Muñoz corrupted by Lucifer (Lucero) before he died (or Muñoz killed him), forcing Muñoz to assume the identity of Lucifer?

Only one person who reviewed the book, my developmental editor, Virginia Smith, EdD, comprehended the novel at this level. But I’ll let you in on a secret. She used to teach college-level English.

So...did the Devil take over the expedition? Was Nature’s fury directed not at Man, but at the Devil? 

Who paid the price? Truth be told, the answer is: the innocent as well as the sinners. As I say in my synopsis:

It is a tale of greed, betrayal, and murder—one in which the reader is given a window into the frozen world at the bottom of the Earth that few people ever will read about, much less experience. Among other things, it explores why, though seemingly unfair, bad things happen to good people; how the battle between good and evil can change forever even the most innocent person; and most of all, the role deception plays in Nature, Man, and Life.

To learn more about Frozen in Time: Murder at the Bottom of the World please visit our website and read the review at: Feathered Quill Book Reviews.