Will Write for Drugs
Tip of the cap to Booksquare who located a Slate article ( visualize squiggly link thing here.) The article details an attempt by the pharmaceutical industry to halt the flow of cheap drugs from our neighbor to the north, Canada. A lobbying group authorized the commission of a thriller called The Spivak Conspiracy. A cautionary tale, it was meant to terrify older Americans who buy their prescription drugs in Canada rather than paying full price in these United States. Plot Summary: Croatian Muslim Extremists Poison Canadian drug supply! Die like flies old people who shop in Canada!
I will let you read the Slate piece on your own. My great grandmother was from St. Catherine’s Ontario, and I was born facing Canada at Niagara Falls General Hospital. Yes, Canadians are different from Americans; those maple leaf backpacks signify more than just fond memories of Margaret Trudeau, Boom Boom Geoffrion and Maurice Richard.
But here’s what I’m thinking, and I’m ashamed of myself for thinking it. I wish that the lobbying group had offered me 100,000 US dollars to write the thriller they so desired. The Spivak Conspiracy would write itself. My hero, Joe Bob Pfizer-Merck, embittered love child and piano tuner, would slip into Canada near Plattsburg to rendezvous with Undercover Pharmacist Veronica Lake Ontario. Together with Veronica’s pal Betty, they’d expose a ring of Underpriced American Drugs sold on street corners to innocents abroad. Escaping a Mounty ambush, Joe Bob would blow up the secret cache of pills hoarded by the evil Dr. Quebec and his hockey loving cabal. Profits at drug companies would soar! They’d reinvest those profits in much needed marketing ideas like my novel. The film version would reinvent Ben Affleck, who in a sepia fadeout crescendo, would go over Niagara Falls in a barrel full of black market Viagra.