:00:00. > :00:08.Now it is time for this week's Meet The Author. Scot Euro set out to
:00:09. > :00:12.write the great American novel, but when the rejection slips piled up he
:00:13. > :00:16.went to Harvard Law School instead and became a lawyer in Chicago. When
:00:17. > :00:20.he finally published a book, presumed innocent in 1987, it was a
:00:21. > :00:26.runaway bestseller, and he's followed it with eight more legal
:00:27. > :00:30.thrillers. The latest is called Identical. It's set in a fictional
:00:31. > :00:34.midwestern city, and it's about twins, DNA evidence and about the
:00:35. > :00:47.flaws in America's system of political campaign finance. This is
:00:48. > :00:51.a book about twins, Paul and Cass. They are Greek Americans. Cass has
:00:52. > :00:54.done 25 years in prison for murdering his girlfriend. Paul is a
:00:55. > :01:01.politician and is about to stand for mayor. The model is the myth of
:01:02. > :01:10.Custer and Pollux. Remind us about that. Castor and Pollux were the
:01:11. > :01:21.identical twins born of the union... As a result of that, one
:01:22. > :01:24.was immortal and one was not. This one was is used in disguise. There
:01:25. > :01:34.was a rather touching outcome to that story. Tiller in the myth, it
:01:35. > :01:42.would be Castor slain and Pollux asked his father, Zeus, to share his
:01:43. > :01:46.immortality with his brother. So one spends six months in Hades, there
:01:47. > :01:53.are all kinds of variations on the ending, but it is always the
:01:54. > :01:58.division of the immortality that is specifically there. What was the
:01:59. > :02:03.appeal of this story for you in constructing a thriller? It's the
:02:04. > :02:11.usual thing, I got what I thought would be a clever idea as a way to
:02:12. > :02:17.twist the story. In retrospect, I realised this whole issue of twins
:02:18. > :02:23.has had mythic proportion in my own life. I think that is another reason
:02:24. > :02:29.I was attracted to it. But I was not conscious of that at all. In your
:02:30. > :02:35.own life? My sister was a twin. The other baby did not come home, it was
:02:36. > :02:42.stillborn. A lot of my developmental years I was persuaded in the way
:02:43. > :02:49.only a three`year`old could be, that perhaps it was my twin. I spent a
:02:50. > :02:54.lot of time with that fantasy, of being an identical twin, one of whom
:02:55. > :03:00.is lost. This book is set in a fictional County, in the midwest,
:03:01. > :03:04.not 1 million miles from Chicago, which is where you live and practice
:03:05. > :03:08.law. It is told from the point of view of several different
:03:09. > :03:11.characters, some of whom have appeared in previous books. There's
:03:12. > :03:18.one character who is new in this book. A character called Tim Brody.
:03:19. > :03:21.He is 81 and a retired policeman. He's a very engaging fellow. I get
:03:22. > :03:27.the impression that character rather crept up you. If you are lucky there
:03:28. > :03:34.is always a character that runs away with the book. Tim Brody is that
:03:35. > :03:37.character. It made sense, since this 25`year`old crime had to be
:03:38. > :03:42.reinvestigated, that the person who is doing that, the boss would
:03:43. > :03:46.necessarily talk to the homicide detective who was in charge. But
:03:47. > :03:54.once they started chatting, he just became so engaging to me and
:03:55. > :04:00.different. Different from your typical hard`boiled cop that we are
:04:01. > :04:11.familiar with in crime fiction. He had to win a place. He says, can I
:04:12. > :04:18.come along? The crime took place 25 years before. The book is set in
:04:19. > :04:23.2008, the crime took place in 1982. Why those specific dates? There's a
:04:24. > :04:27.DNA test that is critical to the plot. It focuses on the issue of
:04:28. > :04:32.whether you can differentiate between even identical twins with
:04:33. > :04:37.DNA, which was thought to be impossible until 2008. I wanted the
:04:38. > :04:46.crime to have taken place before the advent of DNA here in the UK in
:04:47. > :04:55.1984, DNA testing I'm talking about. But not so late that scientists
:04:56. > :04:59.could, with confidence, discriminate between identical twins. In 2008 it
:05:00. > :05:07.had just become recognised that there were actually small variations
:05:08. > :05:14.in the DNA of identical twins. One of the key aspects of this book,
:05:15. > :05:18.there's a lot of stuff about campaign finance. Your candidate for
:05:19. > :05:23.mayor finds his campaign derailed by a right`wing opponent who buys a
:05:24. > :05:30.whole lot of ads, alleging that the candidate was involved in this
:05:31. > :05:34.murder. A walk on character with no name stands up at one point and
:05:35. > :05:38.says, if rich men can buy elections in this way, we are back to the old
:05:39. > :05:46.days when only rich, white folk... White men with property. This is a
:05:47. > :05:52.source of continuing controversy in the United States, the involvement
:05:53. > :05:58.in money. Is that something you ever see changing? It will change for
:05:59. > :06:04.sure. Eventually people will realise that their democracy has run a mock.
:06:05. > :06:08.But it changes, it will change when the membership of the Supreme Court
:06:09. > :06:12.changes. Right now there is a very conservative majority that seems to
:06:13. > :06:20.believe that spending money on politics as a form of unregulated
:06:21. > :06:28.free speech. But it is clearly damaging. It is damaging our nation
:06:29. > :06:35.and democracy. It really is handing control back to the wealthiest
:06:36. > :06:40.individuals and corporations. The same group, referred to as five
:06:41. > :06:47.clowns in Identical, thinks that corporations have the right to spend
:06:48. > :06:52.money on politics. It's very difficult to fathom. You write
:06:53. > :06:57.entertainments, novels. You are a man of clear social views, you want
:06:58. > :07:11.to change things. Do you want the books to change things? I'm not
:07:12. > :07:21.Zola. I believe this, if you want to send a message, use Western Union.
:07:22. > :07:29.Novels are about ambiguity, conflict and things that can't be shrunk down
:07:30. > :07:34.to a simple slogan. Obviously you can't write about contemporary
:07:35. > :07:40.politics without taking note of the mess of private finance. But I want
:07:41. > :07:46.first and foremost to write a story that is compelling, about characters
:07:47. > :07:53.that are compelling. There's not a lot of black and white in my
:07:54. > :07:58.novels. Even the right`wing lunatic who is financing this smear campaign
:07:59. > :08:16.ends up having much more of a point than it appears at the start.
:08:17. > :08:17.Coming up... We ask what kinds of medical challenges do