Pharma Employee Pens Thriller About Industry Deceit

Matt and Erin Smith’s debut novel ranks 832,858 on Amazon.com’s best sellers list, but the married couple have some big designs for their debut novel - and that may be because the subject of their thriller is the pharmaceutical industry. Entitled "Trials: The Risk/Benefit Ratio," the story is about a gravely ill girl whose father takes a job in at a drugmaker, hoping to get his daughter included in a clinical trial to save her life. But what he finds is, well, the stuff of movies - deceit and frightening secrets.

"We have people tell us it would make a great movie,” Matt Smith tells The South Washington County Bulletin in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. “Right now, obviously, that’s just a dream.”

The story line emanates from the couple’s varied backgrounds. Matt really is a clinical research associate at a pharmaceutical company (we don't know which one) and Erin is a former federal law enforcement official and FBI investigator. They'd kicked around countless story ideas, the Bulletin writes, until one day, when a story of “unauthorized research, unethical science and murder” struck like a lighting bolt.

Thanks to their grounding in investigations and pharmaceuticals that such a story was so easy to write. "We followed the adage ‘write what you know,’ ” Erin says. The pharmaceutical industry is what Matt knows, and with it’s billions of dollars and high-stakes research, it’s ripe for a story like the thriller in Trials, he believes. However, he stressed the book’s intrigue is purely fiction. Well, of course.

“I see a lot of movies," Matt tells the ppaer, "and I think, ‘Our (story) is better than that.”