Dick Sickler is the direct object in the title of Luke Goebel’s bizarre noir novel, the man “who had helped kill hundreds of thousands of people with opioids,” as Peter Holiday, aka Philip Krolik, reflects, “through his corporate greed and manipulation of the proceedings of law and at the FDA.” Peter, who has adopted his twin brother’s name as his own, goes on to wonder if his brother, a homeless addict, could be next victim.
Of course, we think of Richard Sackler when we see the name, the real-life pharmaceutical entrepreneur and physician whose company, Purdue Pharma, developed OxyContin, widely believed to have spearheaded the opioid epidemic in the United States.