Local physician injects suspense into 'Dead Wrong'

Local family physician Dr. Klaus Jakelski's first novel, “Dead Wrong,” may be a work of fiction, but it's inspired by a real event.

In the early 1980s, a nurse at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children — Susan Nelles — was accused of poisoning infants under her care.

She was eventually exonerated, and later analysis suggests the tests and methodologies that pointed to the poisoning were flawed, and may have been generating false positives.

“Way back in the '80s, when I was first listening to the Susan Nelles thing, I said to myself 'My God you could spin that into a hell of a story,'” said Jakelski.

There are differences between the Nelles case and the novel's plot, though.

In “Dead Wrong” — which Jakelski describes as a medical-political thriller — the story is set in Boston, where 34 children have died under suspicious circumstances at a private heart hospital.

The protagonists are young Canadian surgeon Peter Martins and aspiring news anchor Anne Maples.

“They blow the case wide open after a short trip to Toronto to gather up some evidence that this investigation just isn't picking up,” Jakelski said.

The result turns out to be something far different from what people had expected.

“There's quite a twist, and the governor is stuck right in the middle of it,” he said. “It's got a little bit of a 'House of Cards' cadence to it.”

The doctor — who's worked everywhere from the emergency room to the operating room during his 35-year career in medicine — said he's always been interested in writing. He was even a political columnist for Northern Life in the 1980s.

But Jakelski said it's only in recent years he's had time to work on his novel in earnest. “This has been cooking for awhile,” he said.

The book is set to be launched in Sudbury Jan. 17, with a signing at Chapters from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., and a launch party at Buzzy Brown's starting at 3 p.m.

“Dead Wrong,” released last fall by the Cobourg, Ont. publisher Blue Denim Press, is 222 pages long, and costs $22. It's available locally at Chapters or online at Amazon.