Wild Card: He Can Cure The Common Cold - But Can He Stay Alive? (Paperback or Softback)

Michael Kough finds a cure for the common cold. Suddenly every crook, crime boss and corrupt politician wants to steal the secret in this witty, entertaining, satirical medical thriller.

Michael Kough is an Australian virologist and degenerate loser who accidentally discovers a cure for the common cold. And a vaccine to neutralise all the world’s deadly viruses. He becomes the richest man in the world. And the most hunted.

Dictators, multinational drug companies and global criminal gangs circle like vultures for a chance to steal the secret to his Holy Grail of virus control.

His life becomes a wild ride. He is kidnapped and tortured and imprisoned in his escapades to protect the formula of his trillion dollar discovery. A formula he keeps locked inside his Big Brain. A formula he concocted in a U.S. germ warfare laboratory.

Amid the turmoil, he meets the love of his life, Charlotte, a beautiful Chinese woman, and a suspected foreign intelligence agent.

Despite his genius, Kough is a flawed character: A gambling addict, who lost his first wife, home and career playing roulette. Now he faces a new challenge for survival to stay ahead of a murderous pack of enemies.

Barry Colman is an award-winning journalist and publisher who divides his time between homes in the Gold Coast and Auckland. He is a former staff reporter for the Courier Mail and Sunday Mail, Brisbane.A very successful business executive, he founded The Liberty Publishing Company which produced financial and classified papers in New Zealand and he acquired The National Business Review from Fairfax.He has always had a strong interest in geopolitics and his works of fiction are set against realistic political and social possibilities. He is a recipient of the Queens Service Medal for services to publishing.