Duncan Ritchie’s technothriller “The Truth Chamber” (Sept. 1) takes the decline of American democracy to frightening ends. In an election year marred by violence, Democratic candidate Anna Hoffman warns a divided America that the country will devolve into a Russia 2.0 if her rival, Mack Leach (the Red Caesar), wins the White House.
After a confrontation with a book burner, Admiral Liam Driscoll joins Anna’s team, and he recruits a Stanford PhD student developing an AI technology called the Truth Chamber to figure out who is behind the escalating violence and an assassination attempt on Anna. Can the truth save America? Or will the Red Caesar bring an end to democracy as we know it?
Learn more at www.duncanritchie.com.
What inspired this book?
The seed for “The Truth Chamber” was planted while I was working for a Japanese bank in Singapore in 2016, with the twin shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump's election. But the true catalyst came in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. I watched UC San Diego professor Barbara F. Walter discussing her book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.” I devoured her book, then dozens of others. I began filling notebooks with "what if?" scenarios. Those notebooks became the foundation for “The Truth Chamber.”
Did current events play a role? If so, how?
Absolutely. I finished the first draft of “The Truth Chamber” the day after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in 2024. It forced me to rethink the novel’s political backdrop. In the end, I knitted a speculative future to a (largely) historically accurate American past, diverging around 2016. My goal was to hold up a mirror to America, then tilt it forward slightly—a warning: “This is where you could be heading.”
Kirkus Reviews called “The Truth Chamber” “eerily prescient” and said, “readers may feel like they’ve found a history book from the future.” That’s a wonderful compliment. One of my editors put it slightly differently: writers don’t necessarily see into the future; sometimes they simply see what is happening a little earlier and more clearly than everyone else. I prefer that idea: that if we observe the present closely enough, the traces of our possible futures are already there.
What kind of research was done for this book?
Not being American has both helped and challenged me. I wanted to ensure my representations of America’s past and of an emerging fascist leader were broadly accurate. I came to the project without the potential benefits—or baggage—of an American education, and with a hell of a lot to learn. I read about 50 books on fascism, the history of race relations in the US, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the role of money and religion in politics, and, of course, language and the art of deception.
I also spent six weeks traveling through nine US states during the 2024 election, visiting key locations in the book. I volunteered for the Harris campaign and knocked on doors in Atlanta, Georgia. That gave me direct experience of a campaign, albeit on the periphery. But more importantly, it gave me invaluable conversations with voters—a real-time temperature check on the American electorate in the days before the election.
How did your own career as a former banker help you when it came to creating the story?
I spent much of my career working on complex transactions across Asia, where political risk was often intertwined with financial risk—I lived through the Asian financial crisis and a coup in Thailand. You learn to ask hard questions: What could go wrong? What are we taking for granted? What happens if institutions, governments or political leaders behave differently from the way everyone assumes or expects they will?
I think that was why Barbara Walter’s interview and book caught my attention—she was identifying warning signs of potential instability and political violence in the US that we tend to associate with decaying democracies in more troubled parts of the world. So I did what risk analysts do: I followed those risks to their logical extremes. But this time, instead of putting my analysis in a briefing paper, I put it in a thriller.
What is your perspective on US elections?
I’m finishing up an essay on what I describe as America’s crisis of democratic legitimacy; in a sense, it’s the nonfiction companion to “The Truth Chamber.” I think ordinary Americans have every reason to feel frustrated and disillusioned with their elections, and with the widening gap between what citizens expect from their representatives and what their political institutions deliver.
As an outsider looking in, aspects of US elections seem bizarre—gerrymandering, dysfunctional institutions, the influence of money, the increasingly toxic polarization. It’s easy to understand why so many ordinary Americans feel the system isn't working for them. And there’s another emerging risk: the delegitimization of elections themselves. If people stop believing elections are free and fair, you risk losing democracy’s greatest strengths: its capacity for self-correction and the peaceful transfer of power.
It seems to me that a democracy designed in the 18th century is struggling to cope with the 21st. It’s a little like trying to run your iPhone 17 Pro Max on OS 1: without an upgrade, sooner or later, it’s going to crash.
What inspired this book?
The seed for “The Truth Chamber” was planted while I was working for a Japanese bank in Singapore in 2016, with the twin shocks of Brexit and Donald Trump's election. But the true catalyst came in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. I watched UC San Diego professor Barbara F. Walter discussing her book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.” I devoured her book, then dozens of others. I began filling notebooks with "what if?" scenarios. Those notebooks became the foundation for “The Truth Chamber.”
Did current events play a role? If so, how?
Absolutely. I finished the first draft of “The Truth Chamber” the day after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in 2024. It forced me to rethink the novel’s political backdrop. In the end, I knitted a speculative future to a (largely) historically accurate American past, diverging around 2016. My goal was to hold up a mirror to America, then tilt it forward slightly—a warning: “This is where you could be heading.”
Kirkus Reviews called “The Truth Chamber” “eerily prescient” and said, “readers may feel like they’ve found a history book from the future.” That’s a wonderful compliment. One of my editors put it slightly differently: writers don’t necessarily see into the future; sometimes they simply see what is happening a little earlier and more clearly than everyone else. I prefer that idea: that if we observe the present closely enough, the traces of our possible futures are already there.
What kind of research was done for this book?
Not being American has both helped and challenged me. I wanted to ensure my representations of America’s past and of an emerging fascist leader were broadly accurate. I came to the project without the potential benefits—or baggage—of an American education, and with a hell of a lot to learn. I read about 50 books on fascism, the history of race relations in the US, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the role of money and religion in politics, and, of course, language and the art of deception.
I also spent six weeks traveling through nine US states during the 2024 election, visiting key locations in the book. I volunteered for the Harris campaign and knocked on doors in Atlanta, Georgia. That gave me direct experience of a campaign, albeit on the periphery. But more importantly, it gave me invaluable conversations with voters—a real-time temperature check on the American electorate in the days before the election.
How did your own career as a former banker help you when it came to creating the story?
I spent much of my career working on complex transactions across Asia, where political risk was often intertwined with financial risk—I lived through the Asian financial crisis and a coup in Thailand. You learn to ask hard questions: What could go wrong? What are we taking for granted? What happens if institutions, governments or political leaders behave differently from the way everyone assumes or expects they will?
I think that was why Barbara Walter’s interview and book caught my attention—she was identifying warning signs of potential instability and political violence in the US that we tend to associate with decaying democracies in more troubled parts of the world. So I did what risk analysts do: I followed those risks to their logical extremes. But this time, instead of putting my analysis in a briefing paper, I put it in a thriller.
What is your perspective on US elections?
I’m finishing up an essay on what I describe as America’s crisis of democratic legitimacy; in a sense, it’s the nonfiction companion to “The Truth Chamber.” I think ordinary Americans have every reason to feel frustrated and disillusioned with their elections, and with the widening gap between what citizens expect from their representatives and what their political institutions deliver.
As an outsider looking in, aspects of US elections seem bizarre—gerrymandering, dysfunctional institutions, the influence of money, the increasingly toxic polarization. It’s easy to understand why so many ordinary Americans feel the system isn't working for them. And there’s another emerging risk: the delegitimization of elections themselves. If people stop believing elections are free and fair, you risk losing democracy’s greatest strengths: its capacity for self-correction and the peaceful transfer of power.
It seems to me that a democracy designed in the 18th century is struggling to cope with the 21st. It’s a little like trying to run your iPhone 17 Pro Max on OS 1: without an upgrade, sooner or later, it’s going to crash.
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