I read, and enjoyed, the second book in the series, BLOOD BOND, on its release in late 2009. You can read my NZLawyer review here. I'm looking forward to seeing how Green brings his saga of the Chatfield family - apparently the only survivors of a global pandemic, thanks to a rogue familial gene - to a climax.
Green, who is now in his mid 60s, was born in England but has lived in Auckland for a few decades (having transferred here as the IT Manager of a large British multinational). He has had a lifelong love of sailing, worked in the Merchant Navy in his younger years, now lives on a yacht in Gulf Harbour, north of Auckland, and travels to Europe each year for the New Zealand winter. Before he started his thriller trilogy he also wrote a humorous sailing-inspired book, BIG AGGIE SAILS THE GULF.
You can read more about Michael Green in a Crime Watch bio here and his website here.
I do like his fairly lively website bio, which begins by stating that Green "arrived in this world with a 'hell of a bang'. He was born during an air raid in May 1944, under the kitchen table in his grandmother's cottage in Sevenoaks, Kent, England."
When Green retired from his IT consultancy business in 2003, he found he had more time to write, and notes in his blog that "like many who retire, I also felt it was time to ‘put something back’. " Combining his goals of writing a novel, and raising money for charity, he began work on a thriller, inspired by the SARS outbreak, looking at how the few survivors of a global pandemic that got out of control might act, and interact, when everything was stripped away from them.
Green aimed to raise $10,000 for the telephone counselling charity Lifeline - a cause close to his heart due to New Zealand's high youth suicide rate, and the fact that years ago he'd lost his son, and an aunt back in England, in that way. Green self-published THE CRUCIAL GENE, using his toastmaster skills to market the book - he sold out the print run (and more) by talking to Lions, Rotary, and Probus Clubs, and was able to exceed his planned donation to LifeLine. The book was then picked up by Randon House, and republished in late 2008 as BLOOD LINE (with some minor edits to make it a 'tighter' novel). BLOOD BOND followed in late 2009, with the third and final instalment in the trilogy, BLOOD ROOTS, released soon.
In BLOOD ROOTS, the Chatfield family, scattered across the globe, continue to fight for survival. Their only hope is to form one strong community together, but power struggles, violence and deception keep them apart. In this thrilling conclusion, the New Zealand community makes a last desperate bid to return to their relatives and blood roots in England. Along the way they discover more survivors of the super-SARS pandemic, but is this new addition to the gene pool more trouble than it's worth?
You can read more about each book in the trilogy, including an extract from each of the three books, at Green's website here.
Do you like post-apocalyptic style thrillers? Have you read BLOOD LINE or BLOOD BOND?
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