The Surest Poison

I want to say something about Chester Campbell's The Surest Poison.

Sid Chance and Jaz LeMieux are fresh, new characters, and fun folks to follow. And I know something about the subject matter of the book: TCE and tracking down from whence it came. For twenty years I defended TCE pollution cases, as TCE was the most commonly used degreaser in the world up until the mid-eighties and it's found its way into the groundwater in many areas.

How did it get there? Sometimes from dumping, but usually from plant spills, leaking pipes or product stored outside.

And the chemical is interesting. While it's allegedly harmful to many systems in the body, it's like beer; it's not stored. It quickly leaves the body through urination. The original EPA mouse/rat studies which led to the "Possible Carcinogen" determination, were flawed, seriously flawed. The studys' flaws were similar to those which led to the erroneous determination that saccharin was cancer causing, which it took the EPA over thirty years to correct. Indeed, TCE used to be the decaffeinating agent in coffee. If you drank Sanka, you drank TCE. And it was used in the dry cleaning process. If you wore dry-cleaned clothing, you wore TCE.

But there's a more dangerous aspect to TCE than its immediate harmful affects on the body or even its effects over time. TCE changes its chemical composition, and when it does so, it evolves into much more dangerous chemicals, known cancer causing agents, agents like PCE or vinyl chloride. Allow TCE to percolate long enough in your ground water and you will find these chemicals there. And they can kill you. And this is just the groundwater. Soil gases, gas percolating upward, is also dangerous.

So Chester's spot on, and the problem with TCE cleanup is finding who to blame. Cleaning the groundwater, so it's free of these chemicals is very expensive. It requires pumping stations and filtration equipment. You have to draw the flow in, clean it and then disperse it so it flows naturally, not an easy thing to do. And in many cases, the party responsible for the TCE leaching into the soil and groundwater is dead or ceased operations many, many years ago. In some cases, the government is even responsible, because the government took over the operation of some plants during the Second World War. Chemical procurement records must be researched, aerial views, if they exist, must be studied, loan and property ownership records, and trucking company records. It's a tough job. We had a case in Rockford, Il where we found over eighty companies had used TCE during the period 1940-1980. The groundflow was from the industrial area into suburbs that didn't exist during most of that period. The cost of cleanup was in the hundred million dollar range. The cost and number of companies involved was so high, the city, in conjunction with the EPA, organized a special cooperative arrangement to manage cleanup and funding.

So the problems Sid and Jaz face in The Surest Poison are real. Many companies have gone bankrupt facing the prospect of TCE cleanup. The opportunity for crime is high.

Bravo, Chester, for bringing this to light and for the opportunity to meet folks like Sid Chance and Jaz LeMieux.

Internet - prime source for research

By Chester Campbell

The Internet is a great source for research on a mystery novel. When I started working on The Surest Poison, my new book due out next month, I had the basic idea for a plot contributed by a friend who’s a PI in Nashville. She’d worked a case a few years back that involved the dumping of a large amount of the toxic chemical trichloroethylene, commonly known as TCE.

My first step was to Google the chemical compound to see what it was like, how it was used, and what effects it would have on public health. I found both government and non-profit organization sites devoted to information on various pollutants, including TCE. I copied pages of details on the chemical and its health effects. I also found it was used as a degreaser in cleaning things like auto parts. All vital information for use in the novel.

I decided to locate my fictional chemical dump behind a small plant in a mostly rural county on the west side of Nashville. The other adjoining counties all had large populations and at least one moderate-sized city.

Back I went to the Internet to gather all the information available on Cheatham County. I found enough to steer me in the right direction when I made my first on-scene visit.

Since I put my protagonist, Sid Chance, in my home area of Madison, a northeastern suburb, I didn’t need the Internet or anything else to handle that area. However, I gave him a female sidekick who had inherited controlling interest in a lucrative chain of truck stops from her father, a French Canadian import.

I wanted Jasmine (Jaz) LeMieux to live in a French Colonial mansion in an affluent section on the other side of Nashville. I did a search on French Colonial houses and came up with one I used as a model. I also did a Mapquest search, both street and aerial views, to check out the Franklin Road area for a likely spot.

I also used Mapquest to look into several other areas, including the small town of Centerville, where I had them make a helicopter landing. It was also useful to figure how long it would take to drive from Jaz’s house to the location of a climactic event. And when I did the helicopter flight, I looked on the Bell Helicopter website to pick out the Jetranger III for the ride.

I set a few scenes in the fictional town of Lewisville, where Sid worked as chief of police until false accusations of bribery ended his career. I named it after explorer Meriwether Lewis, who died on the Natchez Trace near where I placed the town. I checked the Internet to be sure I had my facts correct on the Lewis and Clark Expedition’s chief.

I used the Internet in countless other ways to check out minor points. The common advice is to be careful of the facts you get off the web, as there is plenty of misinformation out there. If it was something I needed to be sure of, I always chose a reliable source, and on occasion checked another to confirm what I found.

Another use I made of the Internet was to ask questions on listserves or through emails to people like Dr. Doug Lyle, the forensic guru, or in one case, ex-policewoman Robin Burcell.

The Internet has made researching for a book as easy as sitting down at your computer. It can save hours of time and miles of travel. I recommend it highly.