Crucible of Fear by D. W.  Whitlock-Review & Guest Post

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ABOUT THE BOOK: Release Date April 6, 2021

A man’s life in chaos. His young daughter at risk. What is a pound of flesh worth?

Dante Ellis is a successful advertising executive on the rise. His world is plunged into a harrowing nightmare after he’s targeted by ruthless hackers known only as Dark Messiah.

Dante soon discovers no part of his life too sacred to be used against him, no secret buried too deep. What began as a veiled threat soon descends into a desperate conflict against the will of an unseen enemy.

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REVIEW:CRUCIBLE OF FEAR by D. W. Whitlock is a near-future, sci-if, techno thriller focusing on thirty-something advertising executive Dante Ellis, and the carnage that is about to become his life.

Told from third person perspective following several intersecting paths CRUCIBLE OF FEAR focuses on artificial intelligence, and organized groups of cyber hackers out to prove they have the ability to control whatever and whomever they want. A futuristic world of camera drones that record and spy, using the recorded booty for blackmail and more, advertising executive Dante Ellis finds himself the ultimate target of betrayal and revenge, never knowing the who, what or why, until the very end. With not only his life, but the life of his daughter now the focus of a group or entity calling itself the Dark Messiah, Dante is on his own when he discovers that the people meant to help have been compromised by the very entity targeting our story line hero.

CRUCIBLE OF FEAR has many similarities to the television show Mr. Robot™. In Whitlock’s world the cyber hackers take aim at several people in an effort to produce enough fear to obey their commands but the ultimate target is Dante Ellis, a man whose past and present is about to implode.

D. W. Whitlock pulls the reader into a complex scenario of cyber crimes, hackers, AI, and computers; a world that resonates with what is, and what could be, but a world where our entire existence can be destroyed by the stroke of a key. A thrilling, suspenseful and intriguing story, CRUCIBLE OF FEAR begins with a bang, then builds slowly revealing the interconnected pathways and characters, ending with the possibility of so much more.

Copy supplied for review

Reviewed by Sandy

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The Idea

Some writers say it’s not what you write about, but how you write it. This approach tends to be more popular in literary fiction where the stories center around a character or characters reacting and dealing with a trauma. But for commercial fiction, writers such as Preston & Child, James Rollins and Michael Crichton have built their stories around a core idea that the believability of the entire story hinges on. Would Jurassic Park exist without its key conceit? I find the tried-and-true what if question is a good place to start for both analyzing existing stories, and the fun part, creating new ones.

What if…dinosaurs were alive today? Interesting question, but one that had already been asked and answered by Arthur Conan Doyle in his seminal work, The Lost World, all the way back in 1912! That story put dinosaurs on a raised plateau in South America, cut off from the rest of the world, safe from extinction. Plausible in 1912, a world still traveling by ship and rail on the cusp of flight, laughable in the technologically advanced and interconnected world of the 90s. Let’s start again with the what if, and expand upon it with the follow up, but how?

What if dinosaurs were alive today? What if we had access to their DNA? But how?

I remember reading Jurassic Park for the first time. That moment in the book when Crichton reveals how it was done was electric for me. As a life-long dinosaur nut and Crichton fan, I was already in. But how did this technological miracle happen? The planting of the ideas was there, the Chekov’s gun cleverly disguised as a series of questions: Why was Ingen, a genetic research corporation, stockpiling amber? Why were small dinosaurs, at first misidentified by experts as mere lizards, suddenly attacking children along coastal towns in Costa Rica? How had Ingen’s scientists achieved the impossible, the resurrection of extinct animals from Earth’s distant past?

DNA extracted from the blood of mosquitoes trapped in amber after feeding on dinosaurs over sixty-five million years ago.

It was an impossible, yet plausible idea, one that answered the what if in such a profound and clever way, that for this reader, the story shot home. At that point, I was bought in, disbelief suspended, prepared for the ride of my life.

I was not disappointed. Along with many, many other readers. From what I understand, the movie did pretty okay too.

So, what is the answer then? Is the idea itself important? According to John Truby, author of Anatomy of Story, he would say it’s at the very core of the process itself. He cautions writers to take their time with what they choose to write about, tap into their passions, aligned with what readers want to actually read. So, choose wisely. Take your time. Write something that will change the world, Truby says. Lofty ambitions, but why not shoot for the stars? The reality is, as an author, you’re going to spend years of your life with what you choose to write about. Planning, writing, editing, pitching, selling, interviews, sequels or series. Making sure your story is worthy of a commitment longer than most marriages is sound advice.

And what about me? What do I think? I believe that a story premise starts with the what if, and ends with the how. I believe the core idea of how something is, or has come to be, can be just as compelling and interesting as the what if itself.

It’s a personal decision, what to write about. For some, how you write it, the prose, the voice, is enough. But for me, the how can elevate the what if from the mere genesis of a story to an idea that can resonate across decades and thrill readers for years to come. And quite possibly, bring dinosaurs back into the world, if only in our collective imaginations.

D.W. Whitlock