About Thomas Roehlk
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.
Roehlk is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin and John Marshall Law School, and received a Master in Management degree from Northwestern University. A devoted long-distance athlete, Roehlk has completed more than 100 marathons and ultramarathons around the world, including marathons in every U.S. state and Canadian province. In addition, he has completed ten Ironman triathlons. After 46 years in the Chicago metropolitan area, Thomas and his wife now split their time between Florida and New York. Red Deuce is his first book.
Red Deuce (2024)
Your biggest literary influences:
Thomas Perry, John Sandford, David Liss, Caleb Carr, Elmore Leonard, Tim Powers
What readers will take away from your book:
Readers will have a view into a corporation and its characters, as well as how it operates, to a degree. Most importantly its in-house lawyers should be seen in a more positive light. This point of view has been lacking or painted in a disparaging way over the years. Think of the in-house counsel depictions in Mario Puzo’s deadly Tom Hagen in The Godfather, Michael Clayton’s maleficent, career-obsessed general counsel Karen Crowder, or Michael Chrichton’s fussy and petty InGen general counsel Donald Gennaro from Jurassic Park.
Readers should also expect visuals in the City of Chicago and its suburbs, a part of the country that is not given its due attention (in my opinion), and a great spot for history, work and living.
What is your ideal target audience?
My ideal target audience is readers of thrillers in general, but in particular the reader who can appreciate a new perspective on the role of in-house corporate lawyer.
If you had to describe your book as a cross between two well-known books, what would you say?
Red Deuce is a cross between Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent and James Grady’s Six Days of the Condor. Or you could combine any John Grisham novel with any of the Jane Whiteside Thomas Perry novels.
The book that changed your life:
It was the short story by James Thurber The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which left me with the life-long habit of imagining things. That led to a love of fiction, both reading and writing. Imagining things led me to pick up and tuck away real events in life and use them for springboards for good stories.
Tell us about the protagonist in your latest book, and who would play her or him if they made a movie out of your book?
Mandy Doucette is a conflicted player in corporate America, introverted on a personal level yet cast out into the open in a big way with a prominent career role. She and her sister succeed in unlocking a mystery in a deal, leading to a national security disaster. Given that the protagonist Mandy and her twin sister Reggie are redheads, I imagine Jessica Chastain as ideal for the role. I am also drawn to Jessica Chastain by her character in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, where her character was driven and put herself in front in an unflinching role of aggressiveness.
If your protagonist could befriend any character from literature, who would he or she choose?
I think Mandy Doucette would choose Sherlock Holmes so she could pick his brain in his detective capacity. Mandy’s work does involve solving mysteries and rectifying wrongs, so any help she could get along the way should not be denied to her.
If you could write a retelling of any book and put your own spin on it, which book would you choose and why?
I would change John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, because it left open a vast opportunity for a sequel that was denied us by Toole’s tragic suicide. And no one since has tried to write a sequel or even been able to make a film adaptation of the book. I would have Ignatius P. Reilly become an independent-living history professor and embrace his muse Fortuna to give him new adventures in New Orleans.
Your favorite literary character:
I have many, but I can narrow it down to two: Ignatius P. Reilly from John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, whose outlandish character is so much fun and endearing; and Jane Whiteside from Thomas Perry’s collection of books, who is an inventive, aggressive yet careful force as a character.