Karl C. Klontz

When I was one year old, I traveled with my two older brothers, a sister, and my parents to India where my father worked as a medical missionary. In addition to teaching at a medical school in the south part of the country, my father worked with patients with leprosy at what was then called a "leper colony." He enjoyed living abroad so much he decided not to return to the U.S. but, rather, to join the U.S. Foreign Service as a physician working at embassies around the world. For that reason, I grew up in Nepal, Austria, and Colombia before attending college in the United States. After graduating from Georgetown University, I earned an M.D. degree from the University of California, San Francisco before completing a residency in Preventive Medicine.

As an infectious disease epidemiologist, I investigate disease outbreaks. My medical thrillers blend medicine, epidemiology, travel, and adventure. On the side, I journey each year to some of the most remote parts of the world to install solar power systems at no cost to villagers without electricity. I pay for all expenses and ask for nothing in return. I've installed solar systems at hospitals, schools, and churches in Bangladesh, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and, most recently, hired a Ugandan colleague to travel to Sudan to install a system at a nursing school in a conflict zone of that nation.

The central theme of my medical thrillers is justice. In my first novel, Stand at Bay, I write about justice for land; in Mirrors, justice in science; in The Leopard's Lines, justice for animals; and in Latitude Revenge, justice for justice. My fifth novel, in progress now, focuses on justice in love.