Australia’s Michael Byrnes was raised in Sydney next to the raunchy Kings Cross entertainment district, on the edge of the then-poor, now-trendy inner-city harbourside enclave of Woolloomooloo. He managed to make it to Sydney University, where he read economics and politics, emerging with an honours degree. He followed the advice of one of his teachers at St Mary’s Cathedral high school and went for a career in journalism. This led to him landing a job as a copy boy in the old Fairfax building which, then, decades ago, reeked wonderfully of printers’ ink. Byrnes went on to many years of tumultuous reporting as a foreign correspondent, with fulltime postings to Tokyo, Jakarta, Manila and Hong Kong, as a centre for coverage of China. His concentration on reporting on money and politics got beneath the skin of presidents, governments and other notables, putting him at the centre of many turbulent events. Harvest of Greed, a thriller about a global crisis which would hit hard at almost everybody on the planet and which could so easily be brought about by a few men’s greed, is his first novel. It is built on insights gained while reporting on the huge international grains industry for the global newsagency Reuters, and also on such hair-raising events as the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 for the Australian press. He now lives with his wife in Sydney, while their adult son lives and works in Tokyo.