Death Game by Cheryl Swanson Deepened by Cancer Experience

As Hawaiian thriller author Cheryl Swanson knows, stories often get more interesting when death enters the picture. Amazingly, her own experience has taught her that is sometimes as true in real life as in fiction.

Four years ago Cheryl Swanson was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. “Make a will,” her surgeon urged, when asked for a prognosis. Instead, Swanson transferred her feelings of being out-of -control into her debut novel, a thriller in which a strong, likeable female protagonist has to deal with her troubled teenage brother getting involved in a violent Internet game that leads to murder.

“Being in a chemo room is like being in the anteroom of a gas chamber,” Swanson said. “My challenge was to put that thoroughly awful thrill into words. And then, final step, create a much more entertaining situation than my own, in which those feelings might have happened in the first place.”

In Death Game, Swanson sends her female protagonist, Cooper O’Brien, on a nonstop roller coaster ride through the mean streets of San Francisco. Terror nips at Cooper’s heels all through the book, just as it did at Swanson’s during her cancer treatment. “What Cooper goes through is a reflection of what you experience as a cancer patient,” Swanson said. Cooper’s family, her life, her mental balance, her self-respect—they are under attack. “Just like those of all individuals fighting an extremely critical disease,” Swanson claims.

Death Game is chilling, but also often hilarious. Peopled with renegade teenagers wearing “Enema of the State,” and “I Love my Weenie,” t-shirts, a man who conceals microphones in his Iron Maiden bra, and a nonchalant beauty who seduces almost everyone she meets in Absinthe, a swank San Francisco restaurant, this is the wonderfully wacky landscape of life, San Francisco-style. In Death Game, San Francisco is a city where everything that is not for sale is up for grabs.

As Cooper searches for her vanished kid-brother, she is plunged into a wind tunnel of violence and dread. But she turns her terror and depression into a joke. “This is exactly what you see in cancer treatment rooms,” Swanson said. “You laugh because it’s laugh or commit suicide. You quickly learn not to take anything seriously. “

Cheryl Swanson cites that old Kathleen Turner movie, Romancing the Stone, as one of her inspirations for staying with her novel. “Remember how this crazy romance novelist forgets everything while she was writing? Cancer treatment made me feel just like that. Half the time, while I was writing about my heroine getting beat up, poisoned and terrorized, it was me I was writing about. I would go home from chemotherapy and find myself in the perfect mood to write the next horrifying scene in my novel. And then I would lighten up and start laughing. It’s how you handle something like this—it’s what gets you through.”


Swanson pointed out that being diagnosed with a serious disease often causes people to get down—finally—to doing what they’ve always wanted to do. “A serious disease teaches you your own mortality, your own humanity, your own limits. Once you’ve stop deluding yourself about your invincibility, you realize the time is now. Or never. Not next month, not next year. Today.”

Swanson pointed out that women often struggle with wasting their time on non-essentials. “Women are expected to be caretakers, nurturers, housekeepers, nannys, pet-sitters, and walking credit-cards for their teenagers,” she said. “We’re all at the point of self-annihilation. As Erma Bombeck once said: “’Just doing the housework will kill you, if you do it right.’”

“As women, we have a right to pursue our own dreams—but too often we let them slide. At some point, we’ve got to stop accomplishing what others want us to do.”

The reviews of Death Game indicate that Swanson has accomplished something worthwhile with her debut novel. According to December, 2006, Midwest Reviews: “The author, Cheryl Swanson, has penned a stunning debut novel with all the hallmarks of a great thriller.” According to Jeffrey Marks, consulting editor with Mystery Scene magazine and Edgar-nominee, “Pacing, characterization, intrigue, Death Game has it all. It keep me on the edge of my chair from the very first chapter. I couldn’t put it down and read it well into the night.”

Epinions review (December, 2006) said: “If you’re looking for a thoughtful, well-crafted thriller that will keep you guessing till the last clue’s in place, with a strong-willed protagonist who’s so real you finish the book thinking that she must exist somewhere on Earth, then give yourself a break and read Death Game at the earliest opportunity.”