Everything changed when scientists discovered the drug. It looked like the cure for aging, but all progress comes with a price tag. Now, eternal youthfulness will be paid for by the blood of the innocent.
The blood of “carriers” is the most valuable commodity on earth. When treated with a new wonder drug, it cures disease, increases power, and makes the recipient a virtual superman.
It also makes the carriers targets. Young people with the right genes are ripped from their families and stashed in “blood farms.”
Ellie Batista became an LAPD officer specifically to fight this evil as a member of the Blood Squad, but her ambitions are thwarted—until the day she and her partner are ambushed during a routine stop. The resulting events plunge her into an undercover world more dangerous than she could have ever imagined.
Because a madman has found a way to increase the potency of the blood to levels previously unimagined. As he cuts a bloody swath through the already deadly world of blood cartels, Ellie is the only hope to stop him before the body count explodes.
Throughout the history of the world, any commodity that becomes valuable beyond the range of it’s worth as a single item develops a black-market selling at a much higher price than on the regular market. This is done to hasten the delivery of the item for those that don’t want to wait and to bring the item to a group unable to get it on the regulated sales avenue. Chris Mooney sets such an item up as the most valuable commodity ever discovered. It is blood from a select group of carriers that when treated can bring to recipients a longer and much healthier life than ever available. This makes the carriers a group to be preyed upon. When discovered they become subject to kidnapping and either death by draining or a life of captivity as a donor where their masters charge fortunes to customers looking for the treated blood. The carriers of the blood become targets for people taking them away from their lives keeping them on a “blood farm”
Ellie Batista has joined the Los Angeles Police Department specifically to become part of the Blood Squad and help fight the incidence of blood farms and exploitation of those captured by people to be placed on the farms. It is a path that is not quickly open to a newcomer such as Ellie, but fate intervenes when the man she is first partnered with is killed in the line of duty. The circumstances allow her to convince her supervisors to permit her to enter the department as an undercover agent. Ellie has an excellent personal reason to want to work with the Blood Squad as we discover that her twin brother was kidnapped as a baby due to having the blood type making him a donor. The rumors circulating about him are that he is still alive after many years and possibly being held on a blood farm.
Ellie’s work as an undercover agent is fraught with danger and the distinct possibility of her being killed. To also add to the factors, she must weigh in her decision the meeting with another police officer with whom she falls in love. It appears that he is going to ask her to marry him but her working undercover is a detriment to any attachment. The author depicts Ellie with all the factors weighing upon her and her very normal approach to handling her ambivalent situation with all the doubts and second-guessing that any person would face.
10/2020 Paul Lane
BLOOD WORLD by Chris Mooney. Berkley (August 18, 2020). ISBN: 978-0593197639. 448 pages.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2020 at 8:00 AM and is filed under Book Reviews, Crime Fiction, Fiction, Sci-Fi/Fantasy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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