Dillon

One could say Dominic Dillon is a man blessed to have escaped early life as a Baltimore street ruffian. He knocked up a girl, who dies at the hands of an abortionist. Roundabout, this brings Dillon before a judge, who, with a dash of pity in his heart, sends Dillon into the care of the Jesuits who’re known to be as tough-butted as drill sergeants. Tougher, perhaps. They re-tooled him, gave him purpose and a sense of himself, unlocked his talents too. It came as no surprise to them, when he went on to become a first-pew geneticist―and, along the way, a Jesuit, himself.
Headstrong but good-hearted, a maverick and a card-carrying idealist, he has deep feelings for the god-forgotten of this this world. That’s easy enough; he was one of them once. Dillon never got tamped down, never was homogenized; he’s his own man, a sort of Ayn Rand-type character, who believes what he believes, unswervingly. Once, at a time when he was a Visiting Lecturer, age 32, at Cambridge, he got rash enough to chastise the High Command of the Vatican. He broadsided them while co-hosting a BBC-TV show. Of course, he paid big-time; the Vatican levied upon him a Writ of Censure, a rarity, gagging him while canceling his right to teach. He is a popular, talented teacher, loving it, and now…well now, nothing…
And so begins his odyssey as, banished to Africa, his stars dance when he leans things about age-old, tribal medicines. Fate smiles when he discovers the ever-elusive answer to reliable gene engineering. It can change everything in the world of medicine. Big Pharma and the medical establishment are only too aware of what it means…and Dillon becomes a marked man…
The Grail is within reach, the horizon beckons, and, like a lonely prophet, his quest for followers and support begins. He can, he believes, bring about a situation whereby countless millions of the ill and misbegotten can now live disease-free lives. A great thing is possible if only he can prove that he’s got what he’s got…did what he did in Africa for three aging women …
As a battle is joined on several fronts, a rock-strewn road looms.
It’d be rockier yet were it not for two women who come to center-stage in his life. Well, maybe yes, maybe no. They’re key to the story’s happenings and are as different as summer and winter. One way of another, he’s entwined with them. Feelings, passions, misunderstandings, betrayal, wants and un-wants are rife in this triangular relationship.
You’ll not soon forget them, nor Dillon either…
And there’s this. Borrowing a leaf from the master filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock, the story has a “macguffin” when Dillon finds himself in the unwanted position of an overseer of a 400- year-old, humongous trust. As a gut-punching battle for its control ensues, he will bear its brunt. Much of the battering is orchestrated by the Swiss government, together with one of their premier private banks. And one of the women, thinking she’s been sidetracked and cheated, adds her formidable muscle when declaring yet another all-out war on Dillon. The “macguffin” ties into his Eureka discovery of gene enhancing, and when he refuses demands placed upon him to do something dastardly, he’ll nearly pay with his life.
It’s worth a look. Especially, if you sometimes wonder why it is, “…no good deed goes unpunished…” You’ll tell if this yarn is for you by digging into the first two chapters, which are free. Under a different working title, this story was submitted to a Writer’s Digest fiction competition. The reviewer described it as “stunning”. Really true!