Cry of the Needle is a searing tale of love and vengeance. Revenge that is a dish best served Irish.
When medical malpractice leads to violent revenge, Irish-style…
Kieran Kelly’s world turns upside down when his wife’s health is devastated by an epidural in childbirth. Incensed by damning evidence of medical and pharmaceutical misconduct, the tormented former IRA hit man plots revenge against those he deems responsible, including a government that doesn’t seem to care.
Kelly’s quest brings him face-to-face with an alcoholic physician, an altruistic scientist and a corrupt government minister – but not before the love of a stunningly beautiful but crippled Countess makes him question his motives. He meets Countess Magda von Esterhazy at a meeting of a self-help group for victims of the uniquely painful iatrogenic (doctor-caused) disease that struck down his wife. Magda awakens feelings that he thought he had lost forever.
Meanwhile, one of Kelly’s targets, scientist Jonathan Tring, finds himself embroiled in the Machiavellian machinations of his boss, the gruff and corrupt owner of a pharmaceutical company, and the man’s stunning young American wife. In all the mayhem, Tring, too, finds love – and desperately wants to live to enjoy it.
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Brought up in the East End of London, I left school at the age of seventeen and was indentured into a local newspaper. By the age of twenty-six, I was working as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East. I covered two wars from Tel Aviv, but it was the Yom Kippur war of 1973 that remains the most vivid. I was on the first plane out of London one week into the war. I was accompanied by my wife, Yael, and our baby son, Max. Yael had six brothers fighting in the war. Once we neared the Eastern Mediterranean, we were escorted by Israeli jet fighters. It was clear that there was a worry that the Egyptian air force might seek to shoot us down. We landed safely, and it took me a while to get accreditation with the Israel Defense Force (IDF). I later accompanied Israeli forces up the Golan Heights, and I was one of the first journalists to reach the ceasefire line at Km-101 in the Egyptian desert. I was only once in danger of losing my life, and that was from a ‘friendly’ Caterpillar tractor that was attempting to clear burnt out Syrian armour from narrow paths on Mount Hermon. You would not be reading this but for the presence of mind of a colleague, AP photographer Paul Roque, who jumped out of our car and raced towards the Leviathan, which had just negotiated the brow of the ridge and was heading our way at full speed. It was obvious that the driver had not seen us. Paul managed to alert him just inches from pushing our Plymouth saloon car (almost as big as a tank!) down the mountainside. The closest of calls.
The Yom Kippur war forms the background to part of the main protagonist’s story in The Winds of Kedem. In 1980, I emigrated to Israel with my wife and children and served in the Israeli army three years later. In 1986, we returned to live in London, where we now reside.
Prior to covering the 1973 war, I had worked as a court reporter, which helped me write the court scenes in Schreiber’s Secret, although Nigel Lithman, QC, provided vital assistance in this respect.
There are some things in life that are highly predictable. One of them is that it will be hot and sunny in Tel Aviv, Israel, in early August. On one such day, 8 August 1979, I happened to be visiting the city that I love above all others when I felt my back give out. I was bent double and in terrible pain.
I somehow climbed into a taxi and made my way to Tel Hashomer, the largest hospital in Israel. Within a couple of hours I had undergone a procedure that changed my life irrevocably. It’s called a myelogram, and it is the injection of a dye into the spine in order that any prolapse might be seen on x-ray. In those days, the dye was oil-based and was called Pantopaque. It was also too toxic for use in humans.
Almost immediately, I began to feel symptoms such as pins and needles in both legs; symptoms that I had not suffered previously. The attack lasted for such a long time – more than three months – that my employers, the Reuters international news agency, decided that I was too ill to remain in work, so they put me on their Prolonged Disability Scheme.
For the next nineteen years I suffered recurring bouts of this terrible illness, adhesive arachnoiditis, which would perhaps, in my case, be better described as chemically induced spinal meningitis. Its myriad symptoms are described in Cry of the Needle, so there is no need to repeat them here.
In July 1998, I suffered a major attack that left me virtually bedridden for three years. It was also in that year that I was diagnosed correctly. Scores of experts had failed to do so during the previous nineteen years. Thanks to a self help group, I learned about the disease and its causes. Although still very ill, I felt the urge to continue writing, and to make my third book one that revolved around my illness. After a year of agony, and one in which sitting was purgatory, the result was the polemical thriller about medical malpractice that is Informed Consent. There is no cure for my illness, and I am forced to do most of my writing while standing up and using speech recognition software. I also lost an eight-year battle for justice against the American drug company and the Israeli hospital I deemed negligent in causing my condition. How and why I lost is explained more fully in the Author’s Note in Informed Consent.
A few years after I completed Cry of the Needle, I met a fellow sufferer, Bobbie Cecchini, via the Internet. The result was helping her to write her incredible life story, High Heels & 18 Wheels. I love to hear from readers about my books, my blog, etc., so feel free to drop me a line. You can contact me at radford46@ntlworld.com
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