Red Deuce by Thomas Roehlk
“It’s like buying wood that already has termites deep inside.”
If you’re an American company producing defense technology — technology the Pentagon relies on — you don’t want to acquire a German company that’s been penetrated by Chinese agents. But that’s exactly what LaSalle, a Fortune 500 company based in Chicago, is about to do.
Standing in the way? Only Mandy Doucette. She’s the young, tough, smart lawyer in charge of vetting LaSalle’s acquisitions, and she senses something is wrong. She’s the one who talks about possible termites. Will redheaded Mandy — with help from her redheaded twin sister, Reggie — get to the truth or will ruthless higher-ups silence her?
That’s the question posed by author Thomas Roehlk at the start of his propulsive new thriller, Red Deuce. That, and the question of why a whistleblower of that German company soon meets an untimely and highly suspicious end.
We got the chance to talk to Roehlk all about Red Deuce — what it was like writing a female attorney main character, his passion for corporate law and what he hopes readers glean from his thriller.
Q: Congratulations on your debut! What made you decide to take up writing?
A: As a lifelong reader of fiction, I was interested in telling a good story. I have a perspective (corporate lawyer) I thought could bring an under-explored if not new slant on corporate thrillers. Over the course of a 40-year career in corporate law departments, I was impressed by the female attorneys I worked with throughout. I also think lawyers working in corporations, where the corporation is the sole client, have different pressures and considerations. Hopefully this comes through to readers of Red Deuce.
The main point that I think is poignant to the story is that the corporate lawyer is pressured to be the corporate employee’s lawyer instead of representing the corporation, which produces tension. The other reality of inhouse corporate work is that the lawyer is part of a management team whose ultimate goal is to cause the corporation to profit and grow, producing different stress and conflict. Finally, in this period of the first two decades of the new millenium, corporate misconduct had generated much concern for fighting corporate misconduct, and this was another thematic aspect to the book.
Q: A political thriller novel like Red Deuce is part of a well-loved genre. Are there any titles that served as inspiration for your own?
A: I consider Red Deuce to be a corporate thriller, not a political thriller. But I was inspired by the works of John Grisham and Scott Turow. I was also influenced by the female protagonist in the Jane Whiteside novels by Thomas Perry and the counterintelligence themes in the John Le Carre novels. Outside the written storytelling world, I was also inspired by the film genre. The films Michael Clayton and Jurassic Park gave me two views of corporate lawyers that I found insidious or shallow — certainly not uplifting and honorable. I wanted to achieve some of the latter.
Q: What’s it like crafting a complicated, high-stakes plot like that of your novel? Was it hard keeping track of all the twists and turns of the mystery?
A: Yes, it requires significant planning with full outlining and careful management of the story line. Unlike some writers who just start writing and the story goes wherever the writing takes the author, a book like Red Deuce required careful planning with action sequences interspaced between the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s) throughout the book.
Q: How did you approach writing female main characters? What advice would you give to other authors?
A: I tried to model my female characters on a composite of different female corporate attorneys I have known. Outside the legal/professional character, writing the female characters’ roles was something I just had to throw myself into and then rely on my beta readers to help corral or redirect me. I find it helps to get blunt-force critiques like, “no woman would ever say that,” or “that style is passe for women now.”
Q: What do you hope readers enjoy about Red Deuce?
A: I hope that readers can appreciate the complexities of corporate legal challenges. The corporate legal protagonist is always pushed into uncomfortable territory to get problems resolved. I also hope readers can enjoy the Chicagoland setting.
Q: Any future plans for the Doucette twins? And if not, are you planning any new upcoming projects?
A: The Doucette twins have already gotten through another adventure, and are almost through a third. Stay tuned for more of Mandy and Reggie. In the next two books, their travels will take them through an in-depth Chicago historical story, as well as on trips to the Middle East and the South Pole. I think the Doucette sisters have more runway to explore other corporate thriller stories.
Thomas M. Roehlk is a retired corporate attorney from St. Charles, Illinois. He worked at a variety of major international corporations, including companies in the defense sector, and businesses in consumer products, transportation equipment and financial services. He spent more than 20 years as a general counsel of a public company, and as a chief compliance officer.
