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WORK TITLE: The Iguana Project
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.dalearden.com/
CITY:
STATE: TX
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
RESEARCHER NOTES:
Unable to select heading in LOC
PERSONAL
Married; wife’s name Judy; children: six.
EDUCATION:Washington University, St. Louis, MO, B.S.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, business executive,public speaker, and business consultant. Retired president and CEO of an international consulting firm. Speaker and presenter at business conferences in the United States and abroad.
AVOCATIONS:Woodworking, greenhouse gardening, golf, fly fishing, reading, painting.
WRITINGS
Contributor to trade publications and journals.
SIDELIGHTS
A retired executive and business consultant, Dale Arden is a business expert and writer who spent his career as the president of an international consulting firm. He has worked with companies throughout North America and Europe. He has also contributed to numerous business trade magazines and related publications. Arden holds a B.S. degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Arden’s initial experience as a fiction writer happened during the many long flights he took to destinations in North America and across the ocean. He made the decision to forego some of the more traditional activities of a long air flight—watching movies, reading email, doing extra work—and instead “started to write the novel that had been bouncing around in his head for years,” noted a writer on Amazon.com. Writing became more and more important to Arden, with him snatching short pieces of time whenever he could, whether at home or on the road. Over the course of three years, his debut novel emerged.
The Iguana Project is Arden’s first novel. The book is a combination of thriller and science fiction tale involving a unique form of revenge derived from extrapolation in the biological sciences. Protagonist Patrick Bradaigh is an attorney in Westchester County, New York. He has a thriving law practice, a happy family life with wife Colleen and two sons, and all the trappings of success. An unpleasant reality jolts his world when he realizes that, for years, he has been unknowingly working for a prominent Mafia crime family. Afterward, he starts keeping detailed records on the criminal activities he’s aware of. When the Mafia finds out what he’s doing, they stage a burglary on his home. In the process, they kill Colleen, leaving Patrick devastated and hungry for revenge.
Ten years later, with revenge still driving him, Patrick and his family take a vacation to the Galapagos Islands. There, he meets a biologist, Dr. Kryten Vandermere, who is conducting research on iguanas and the creatures’ remarkable ability to stay underwater for long periods. If Vandermere can figure out the methods for this type of suspended animation, it will have major applications in science and industry, particularly when applied to sustaining astronauts during long space exploration missions. Patrick tells Vandermere that he believes her research could also be useful in the legal system if it was used to put criminals in suspended animation instead of jail. What he doesn’t tell her is that he has a certain murderous Mafia family in mind as candidates for a permanent form of hibernation.
A Kirkus Reviews writer remarked that The Iguana Project is a “story that succeeds on the strength of its ideas,” and concluded that “Sci-fi and criminology deftly merge in this well-paced tale.” Paul T. Vogel, writing in MBR Bookwatch, called the novel “riveting entertainment from first page to last,” and a “deftly crafted read that clearly documents author Dale Arden’s outstanding abilities as a novelist.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, August 15, 2017, review of The Iguana Project.
MBR Bookwatch, October, 2015. Paul T. Vogel, review of The Iguana Project.
ONLINE
Amazon.com, http://www.amazon.com/ (May 14, 2018), biography of Dale Arden.
Dale Arden Website, http://www.dalearden.com (May 14, 2018).
About The Author
Dale Arden is the retired president and CEO of an international consultant firm. He has published articles in trade publications and been a guest speaker at many international business conferences. The Arthur Young Entrepreneurial Services Organization nominated him as Entrepreneur of the Year. He holds a B.S. from Washington University in St. Louis.
Dale is on Facebook and Twitter.
Dale Arden is the retired president and CEO of an international consultant firm. He has published articles in trade publications and been a guest speaker at many international business conferences. The Arthur Young Entrepreneurial Services Organization nominated him as Entrepreneur of the Year. He holds a BS from Washington University in St. Louis.
During his career, he travelled extensively throughout North America and Europe. On long plane trips he decided to stop watching movies, stopped catching up on work and started to write the novel that had been bouncing around in his head for years. Once he started his novel he became obsessed with writing. He found himself writing while at airports waiting for flights, in hotel rooms and at home when time permitted. Three years later The Iguana Project emerged.
In addition to writing Mr. Arden finds himself consumed in his woodworking shop, greenhouse and in his art studio painting. Other interest include golf and fly fishing in the Colorado Mountains. He enjoys reading books by John Grisham, Dan Brown and Patterson, which has no doubt influenced his writing style.
Mr. Arden is married and lives with his wife Judy in a suburb of Dallas Texas. They have six children and eleven grandchildren.
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Print Marked Items
Arden, Dale: THE IGUANA PROJECT
Kirkus Reviews.
(Aug. 15, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Arden, Dale THE IGUANA PROJECT Lulu (Indie Fiction) $32.99 2, 28 ISBN: 978-1-4834-3270-0
In this debut novel, a lawyer hopes that cutting-edge techniques in suspended animation can solve his
problems with the Mafia. Attorney Patrick Bradaigh lives in Westchester County, New York, and runs the
Law Offices of Brady and Sons. For years, while enjoying a seemingly idyllic life with his wife, Colleen,
and twin sons, Nick and Andy, Patrick unwittingly works for the Leggiano crime family. When he realizes
his mistake, he begins keeping records on the Sicilian Mafia and its murderous operations. To remove the
lawyer's leverage, the mobsters burgle his estate. Trying to steal the records from a vault, a thief murders
Colleen. Ten years later, her killer might go free, but Patrick still smolders at the chance for vengeance. The
Bradaigh family goes on vacation to the Galapagos Islands, and it's there that Patrick meets Dr. Kryten
Vandermere, who is researching how iguanas remain underwater for extended periods--which will help
NASA place humans in hibernation during deep space travel. He explains to her his idea for storing violent
criminals in underground sleep chambers, where they won't burden taxpayers but can be awakened if
necessary. Little does the doctor know that Patrick has the Leggiano family marked for a more permanent
kind of storage. Arden crafts a sci-fi thriller that heavily embraces family dynamics and red herrings. He
teases readers, for example, when Andy says that he and Nick "did a lot of switching around" as children
but "never got caught in the act." Arden also schools audiences in the finances of maintaining a prison: "The
approximately hundred and fifty thousand prisoners serving life sentences alone are costing law abiding
citizens over four billion a year in hard-earned tax dollars." That many of the female characters are sexpots-especially
Andy's friend Ronni Marcus, president and CEO of Marcus Manufacturing--gives the narrative a
pulpy feel. Intense violence typical of the genre plays a minimal role except in the opening homicide
sequence and the surprising finale, which act as brutal bookends to a story that succeeds on the strength of
its ideas. Sci-fi and criminology deftly merge in this well-paced tale.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Arden, Dale: THE IGUANA PROJECT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Aug. 2017. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A500364641/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=338dbc58.
Accessed 24 Apr. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A500364641
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The Iguana Project
Paul T. Vogel
MBR Bookwatch.
(Oct. 2015):
COPYRIGHT 2015 Midwest Book Review
http://www.midwestbookreview.com
Full Text:
The Iguana Project
Dale Arden
Lulu Publishing
3101 Hillsborough Street, Raleigh, NC 27607-5436
www.lulu.com
9781483432700, 290pp, www.amazon.com
Synopsis: Lawyer Patrick Bradaigh had it all-the perfect life, wealth, beautiful wife, and children-until he
got involved with the mafia. By the time he realizes his mistake, it's too late. There is no going back, and
he's been warned: if he makes a misstep, he'll be paying in blood. With the hopes of keeping his family safe,
he starts compiling secret records of all the mafia's dirty dealings in his safe at home. Patrick's wife refuses
to hand over the documents and ends up brutally murdered. Years pass before he sees his chance to exact
revenge. While on vacation, he meets a marine biologist who explains she is conducting cutting edge
research on iguanas for NASA. The iguana has the unique ability to stay underwater for an extraordinarily
long time, and NASA hopes to harness a similar technique to send astronauts into deep space. Now, Patrick
knows what he must do. Somehow, he must lure mafia members into seclusion, where he will induce
iguana-like hibernation-indefinitely.
Critique: A riveting entertainment from first page to last, "The Iguana Project" is a deftly crafted read that
clearly documents author Dale Arden's outstanding abilities as a novelist and will leave his enthusiastic
readers looking eagerly toward his next foray into fiction. Very highly recommended and certain to be an
enduringly popular addition to community library collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists
that "The Iguana Project" is also available in a paperback edition (9781483432687, $19.99) and in a Kindle
format ($8.99).
Paul T. Vogel
Reviewer
Vogel, Paul T.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Vogel, Paul T. "The Iguana Project." MBR Bookwatch, Oct. 2015. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A432680256/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a78d756b.
Accessed 24 Apr. 2018.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A432680256