Payoff in Biotech

Biotechnology is Murder. Dirk Wyle. Highland City, Florida: Rainbow Books; 2000. 272 pages. $14.95. ISBN: 1568250452

Seven days before his oral thesis defense, Ben Candidi gets a call from his former boss, Dade County Medical Examiner Geoffrey Westley. Ben is summoned to help a fellow British expatriate, Dr. Brian Broadmoore, investigate whether or not to buy a local biotechnology company. Thus begins another Ben Candidi adventure. While most of us would be sweating bullets trying to prepare for our thesis defense, we have already learned that Ben Candidi, as we know from other Dirk Wyle mysteries, marches to a different drummer. And in this case the drummer is offering Ben, the Mensa genius, $24,000 for four days work, to satisfy Broadmoore’s “due diligence” concerns.

The job requires, among other things, that Ben pretend not only that he already has his PhD, but also that he is experienced in evaluating new companies. Ben has no idea what IND or GMP means, or what due diligence involves. And his job is not made any easier by the fact that he receives no background information on the company from Dr. Broadmoore. It also turns out that the previous scientist selected to perform the due diligence assessment, Dr. Yang, has gone missing, leaving nary a note behind to help Ben with the task at hand.

With three potential anti-cancer drugs in development, BIOTECH Florida is your typical start-up biotech company, including a paranoid chief scientist (Dr. Moon), a CEO (B.B. King) who has a bodyguard and spends all of his time running a construction business, and a spike-heel-wearing Scientific Director (Dr. Cheryl North), who is not above using her Vogue model looks for sexual blackmail.

Ben visits the company, housed in an old furniture warehouse, and tries to interview the staff and scientists, without much success. Dr. Moon, the eccentric chief scientist, inhabits a fully enclosed cubicle in this warehouse, complete with its own private bathroom and ventilation system. He really doesn’t want to talk to Ben, and aside from finding out that the three anti-tumor drugs are isolated from sponges, inhibit protein kinase C, and shrink tumors in mice, Ben is unable to get any detailed mechanistic information. Dr. North is disinclined to leave Ben alone with Dr. Moon, and she stands within hearing range just outside the cubicle the entire time that Ben interviews the paranoid Dr. Moon. In fact, Dr. North is disinclined from leaving Ben alone, period.

Soon after Ben begins his mission, Dr. Moon turns up dead in his cubicle, supposedly of natural causes. One thing leads to another as Ben investigates the company, its compounds and their patents, and its chief scientist’s untimely demise. Along the way are kidnappings, seductions, drug-induced orgies, murder attempts, secret research, and the nagging suspicion that something about the company just isn’t quite right.

This being a Ben Candidi mystery, it is a given that Dr. Moon was murdered (you aren’t paranoid if they really are out to get you), and Ben will escape many close calls to solve the crime. The main suspense comes from figuring out just how and why Dr. Moon was killed, what happened to the mysterious Dr. Yang, and whether or not Ben will have time to prepare the slides for his dissertation defense.

Biotechnology is Murder is the second of a mystery series that includes Pharmacology is Murder and Medical School is Murder. As in those two episodes, the characters as well as the premise behind Ben’s escapades are outlandish, and it is best to suspend belief and go along for the ride.

Dirk Wyle is the nom de plume of Duncan H. Haynes, PhD, a retired medical school professor. He has written four Ben Candidi books in all.

• © American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Theraputics 2010