Author Daniel Kalla returns with The Deepest Fake

The Deepest FakeDaniel KallaSimon and Schuster

“I don’t think there is such a thing as a typical day,” Daniel Kalla confesses. “That’s one of the things about being an ER doctor. No two days are the same for us.”

But that’s not the whole story in Kalla’s case. He can scarcely be called your “typical” emergency room doctor — not when he’s also found the time to write 16 cunningly crafted thrillers that enjoy a growing international following.

So how does this Vancouver physician manage two contrasting careers? Kalla explains it this way: he’s accustomed to the “chaotic” circumstances under which an ER doctor must work — “and to be honest, my writing reflects that,” he adds.

At 59, he’s no longer working full time in the ER. But when he does, “I work a lot of time off hours, so it’s often early morning or early afternoon that are the only times I’m free to write. But it’s never predictable. Sometimes I can go from a busy ER shift and start writing immediately if I feel I have the energy and have something to say.”

He cringes at the thought of ever having to choose between two such personally fulfilling professions.

“My novels are all about suspense and driven by pace, and I’ve learned a lot about that from the emergency room. I can write fast if under a self-imposed deadline and am feeling the pressure.”

His latest novel, The Deepest Fake, certainly draws on his medical background, but it has a lot more on its mind as well. There’s an elusive and deadly poison to be dealt with, the central character is coping with a terrifying terminal illness and his wife’s infidelity while struggling to safeguard his pioneering AI company from sabotage — and the issue of medical assistance in dying will rear its head as well.

But ultimately, Kalla is delivering a cautionary tale about the dangers of unfettered technology. The book’s beleaguered hero, Liam Hirsch, is not only in near collapse because of his own crises, he’s also being forced to question the integrity of the profession that means so much to him. Are the very technologies that he has helped enable — digital deception, deepfake imagery — turning into enemies? And do they signal a wider, even more ominous conspiracy?

“I’m always looking for the right material to build a book on,” Kalla says by phone from his West Coast home. “Artificial intelligence is a subject exploding into the public consciousness, and I immediately realized that this is an incredibly rich topic, especially for a thriller. Incredible opportunities and horizons arise … but so do pitfalls and dangers.” The Deepest Fake is very much a cautionary tale.

Kalla enjoys giving the reader conflicted heroes — “characters who are not black and white” — and putting them through an arc. “Liam is absolutely meant to be an AI pioneer and somewhat blind to the perils of it until it messes up his life in a deeply personal way. He’s so hyper-focused on products they’re producing that he’s losing all objectivity when it comes to the potential dangers of what he’s doing.”

It takes “this incredible wake-up call of a terminal illness” to bring Liam to his senses — but will it be too late? “I really feel this is a redemption story having to do with his personal discovery of values and priorities.”

For Kalla, the practice of medicine is a family business. “I’m a third-generation doctor.” Vancouver’s St. Paul’s Hospital is central to his life story. “My grandfather, my mom and dad, my brother and I have all worked at St. Paul’s and most of my emergency work has happened there.”

As for a writing career — well, in a sense it was always lurking in the background. “When I was a youngster, I loved reading and storytelling, and then put it on the back burner to pursue a more sensible career as a doctor,” he laughs. But he still wanted to write and after completing his medical training he enrolled in a night school course in screenwriting. “I had a wonderful teacher who was very inspirational, and once I got the bug, I never stopped writing.”

Since the publication of his first novel, Pandemic, in 2005, Kalla has focused on a variety of topics that have engaged his inquiring mind — including diet pills, the opioid crisis, vaccine hesitancy and patient abuse. He has even ventured into historical fiction with his Far Side of the Sky trilogy, which deals with the little-known story of the 20,000 German Jews who escaped to the Chinese city of Shanghai during the Second World War.

When COVID-19 came along, he found it unnerving because of the thrillers he had written about global infections: “It was art meeting life in a way I never wanted it to.”

These days, he finds it rewarding to find subject matter that allows for a successful fusion of story and character and enables him to “examine the difficult choices that people must make often under very bad circumstances.”

And what are the rewards of the two worlds he occupies?

“Creating and writing are deeply satisfying to me and my favourite thing is finishing my first draft and finding that the story worked and feeling a sense of completion,” he says. “The sense of connecting with writers is great. With the ER it’s the sense of doing a decent job often under difficult circumstances. We can’t make a difference in everybody’s life; we can’t help everyone, but fortunately we can help some. To have the sense that you’re contributing in some way is very rewarding. But in both cases there’s satisfaction in completing something and challenging yourself, in being competent and passionate in what you do.”

But he also seeks to observe time-honoured mystery convention and keep the reader guessing until the book ends.

“Sometimes,” he confesses with a quiet laugh, “I’m even guessing myself.”