The fifth in the Emma Caldridge series!

by Jamie Freveletti

I’m excited to announce the launch of my latest thriller, Blood Run! It’s the fifth in the Emma Caldridge series and set in the Sahara desert. Because Caldridge is a bio chemist, she usually deals with viruses, bacteria, or other deadly combinations of natural and not so natural biochemical weapons and their ability to create a crisis. And because we’re discussing how a crisis can inform a story, I’ll just say that since I began writing the Emma Caldridge series I’ve learned a ton about pandemics.

 In 2014, vials of Smallpox virus were found in a storage closet in a soon to be closed NIH campus building…

We’ve had many pandemics over the centuries, the Black Death being the most famous in history. It killed an estimated 25 million and that toll may have been met or surpassed by a more recent and deadly virus in just the last century- the Spanish Flu of 1918. Estimates place the death rate for that virus at 20 to 50 million worldwide. The recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine gives an historical account of the Spanish Flu and how it was initially ignored and allowed to spread before officials finally realized that they had a massive pandemic on their hands. The article makes for fascinating reading and includes black and white photos that give an idea of the crisis. It ends with a sobering present day anecdote that reveals how easily our current public health officials can be lulled, just as they were in 1918.

So crisis can often give authors ideas for thrillers that address issues and perhaps allow for creative ways to solve them. Some, like Jurassic Park, imagine what might happen and act as a warning to tread carefully when messing with nature. And some, like Blood Run, can imagine what might happen from a failure of inventory control when that inventory is highly dangerous. Fiction is not real, of course, but it does allow a way to work through an imagined crisis in a safe setting. And also can provide some great reading along the way!

Jamie Freveletti