Shedding light on the matter

We’ve been intrigued with a rather prescient thriller entitled Drugs to Forget, from Martin Granger which arrives on 4^th of June 2018 from Red Door Publishing. Shots are always intrigued with interesting new thriller fiction, so we were delighted when Martin gave us a little insight at what follows in Drugs to Forget.

You would think that you wouldn’t need any lights when filming in sun soaked Africa. In fact, quite the opposite is true. One can light a windowless room with a candle but when you compete with the sun you need kilowatts of power. This was the situation we found ourselves in when filming a village hospital in the middle of the day. The African electrician shrugged his shoulders. Not enough power from the mains to light our biggest lamps. There are some disadvantages in filming in developing areas but every cloud has a silver lining. The hospital doctor was friends with the local power company. The local power company being Tanaka, an elderly man who looked after the small electrical sub-station on the hill.

‘I’ll wind up the voltage,’ he said, ‘We leave it low so there’s more to go around.’ He looked at his watch, it was lunchtime. ‘I’ll also cycle around the village to tell them all to stop cooking.’

It worked. The wards were lit up and we shot the scenes of the sick lying under the mosquito nets. Little did I know at the time that it would be the cornerstone for my new book Drugs to Forget.

I have spent the last 30 years travelling the world making television documentaries. Each film has presented its own hazards. Threats of violence, travel disasters and disease. All rich material for writing thrillers, and so my fictional production company, Bagatelle Films, takes a similar path. The stories they encounter are remarkably akin to the ones my film crew have experienced, but the underlying narrative is laced with crime. This is dramatic documentary noir.

In Drugs to Forget Bagatelle Films’ director Nathalie Thompson embarks on a pursuit of drugs and disease. The drugs, produced by an entrepreneurial biotech company; the disease, Ebola. Her investigation leads to Africa, Indonesia and eventually turns to shedding light on the matter closer to home. And talking of light, it’s no coincidence that when she begins filming diseased patients in an African hospital, she sends her electrician on a bicycle trip around the village. Why? To tell them to stop cooking their lunch so that she can light her set. Doesn’t sound believable does it?

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© 2018 Martin Granger