Briefly tell us about your book.
Fair Warning brings back journalist Jack McEvoy and FBI agent Rachel Walling. It’s been ten years since we last saw these two. Jack is now working for a consumer news site called Fair Warning and Rachel is retired from the FBI and has a business doing background searches on people. Jack becomes a person of interest to the Los Angeles Police Department, which is investigating the murder of a woman he knew. Not one to wait to be cleared, Jack starts investigating the murder himself and pulls Rachel into the case. It leads them down a path into DNA analytics and the dark web hideout for a group of incels.
What inspired the idea behind this book?
Two things. The first was my desire as a former journalist to write about a relentless but unbiased journalist in this day and age when a growing part of the population does not trust the media. And I was also inspired by a story I saw in the newspaper that said the top brass of the American military forbade its soldiers from giving their DNA to heritage and analytic sites because of security concerns. I took these two starting points and blended them together.
What was the research process like for the book?
It was almost entirely online research. I needed to find out about subject matters I knew nothing about, including the incel movement, the billion dollar DNA analytics industry, the government oversight of it, or lack there of, as well as the non-profit news business. I based Fair Warning on a real news site called FairWarning.
If I looked at your internet history, what would it reveal about you?
That I am all over the place in the things that interest me. I go down a lot of rabbit holes because I am always looking for something that is interesting to me, or is unknown but catches my eye. So to see my browsing history would probably look odd because there would be no through thread that connects it all up.
What are you hoping the reader will take away from reading your book?
Well, first, I hope they are entertained. I want the book to carry them with a solid momentum. After that, I hope the book opens their eyes a little bit about the media and the science of DNA. DNA and the study of the human genome is a wonderful thing, but for every technological advance that is made, there is always going to be a villain out there who will figure out a way to turn it against us. Fair Warning is just that. It says keep your eyes open.
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