Former hotelier Eric Rill has room in his life to write novels. So it's not surprising the former Ramada Inns executive has set his first book, a thriller called Pinnacle of Deceit, in the luxury hotel industry.
As in most thrillers, the body count rises quickly in Pinnacle of Deceit. But Rill says he knew of a shock or two in his hotels.
"In the ones I've been involved in, there have been some murders, actually. And there's been some births, there's been some deaths, there's been some suicides.
"People tend to view a hotel as a public place in a way. . . . There are certain things that happen in the book that, in one way or another, happened in real life."
Pinnacle of Deceit (Georgetown Publications, $19.95) unravels the lives of four successful men, who share a secret from their past in an orphanage. As adults, their lives intersect in a dangerous combination of drug trafficking, money laundering, politics and murder, centred around the fictitious Pinnacle Hotels chain.
The Montreal-born Rill entered the hotel business after university.
He was eventually tagged to build Ramada Inns of Canada from scratch. While in London recently on a promotional tour for his book, he recalled that the Ramada on Exeter Road was the first for which he found land.
He rose through the ranks to become head of the entire Phoenix-based organization. But he missed something about projects such as starting the Canadian operation.
"I really like that sort of thing. When I got to the top job and was administering 10,000 people, it wasn't me. I'm not an administrator, I'm more a creative guy."
He left to go into business for himself buying "distressed" hotels, fixing them up and selling them.
But he says, "It was rather stressful because you were always under the gun and when you finally got successful, you sold it. It was financially successful, but it was a long nightmare."
Then Rill left the hotel industry and turned his creativity to writing.
He's made his home in Anguilla, a British dependent territory of 12,000 in the Caribbean, for eight years. It's a quiet place for writing, although Rill also travels a lot.
