Hurricane

DEA agent Bill Broxton is back from Mr. Stewart's first book SCORPION. This time out he is back in Trinidad, investigating the mysterious explosion onboard a sailboat off the coast of California. The boat sank and the skipper, Hideo Tanaka, went down with the ship, however mucho cocaine was discovered so the DEA is interested. Broxton goes back to the Caribbean, where the boat set sail from and confronts the skipper's wife and daughter, Julie and Meiko Tanaka. Julie Tanaka lives aboard a sailboat in the yacht club in Trinidad, her daughter is visiting on a break from medical school. They are clueless about the drugs and angry at Broxton for even bringing it up, right on the heels of them learning about their tragic loss. To make matters worse for the women, a local shipyard wants to confiscate their sailboat home, because they say Hideo was in debt to them for boat repairs. Julie doesn't believe this and besides, she wouldn't give up her boat anyway, so in the middle of the night the women leave Trinidad. However, what the women don't know is that when the boat was in the shipyard, where Hideo supposedly accumulated those bills, some bad guys hid a lot of cocaine aboard. Was Hideo in on the dastardly cocaine hiding? Did he know about the cocaine that was hidden on the boat he died on? Or was he an unknowing dupe? These are questions Broxton wants answered, but the women flee the country before he can learn the truth. And he has problems of his own. The drug smugglers have framed him for murder and he has to go into hiding. The bad guys are after him, the local cops too. Eventually he teams up with a marajuana smuggler named T-Bone, which is a bit ironic, and together they take off after the damsels in distress. And the women are in distress, as the evil, drug smuggling killers are after them. Okay. there you have the beginning of this super thriller and I didn't even mention the hurricane they are all sailing toward. I really liked the Julie and Meiko characters and Broxton is well written too, but I thought he was going to live happily ever after with Maria, who he met in the last book. There is no mention of her here and I'd kind of like to know what happened to her. Did they get married, then divorced? Did they not really hit it off? What? But that aside, I really did like this book and I think you will too.

Bill Broxton, my favorite DEA agent comes back from his debut in "Scorpion." He's back in the Caribbean and he's unattached again. I thought he was going to live happily ever after with the girl from the last book, but it appears, that like James Bond, he's destined to have a different girl in each book. In this one Broxton wants to know why Hideo Tanaka washed up on a California beach after a sailboat he was on was recovered full of cocaine. Tanaka lived with his American wife Julie on a sailboat in the Yacht Club in Trinidad. When he goes there to confront Tanaka's wife, he finds Julie onboard with her daughter Meiko, who is visiting on break from medical school. The women tell him, and he believes them, that they knew nothing of Tanaka's drug activities. He leaves, but someone takes a couple shots at him before he can leave the Yacht Club. He gives chase, dispatches the bad guy and in no time finds himself wanted for murder in a country that hangs killers. To make matters worse, Julie and Meiko have fled the country on their boat with very bad drug smugglers chasing after them. Broxton has no choice but to team up with a likable rouge named T-Bone, who is kind of a drug smuggler himself. T-Bone's sailboat is stuffed full of marijuana that he'd planned on taking from Trinidad up island to St. Martin. So now we have Broxton on a drug boat in hot pursuit of the bad guys, who are chasing the damsels in distress, who are sailing toward St. Martin and did I forget to mention that big bad Hurricane Darlene is headed straight for St. Martin as well. And there you have a very brief synopsis of a super thriller that had me reading my weekend away. "Hurricane" was a fast read about characters I cared about. The dialogue was crisp, the story believable and the action fast and furious. I felt like I was on those sailboats and I really felt like I was caught up in the middle of that Hurricane.

Julie Tanaka is a blue-eyed blond who takes quick offense to DEA Bill Broxton right off the bat when he comes to the sailboat she lives on in the Trinidad and Tobago Yacht Club in the Caribbean. "What," she says to him, when he is surprised at her appearance, "you were expecting someone a little more Japanese?" However her ire is quickly turned to grief when Broxton tells her that her husband has been found dead in the water off the coast of California and that the sailboat he had been hired to deliver was a drug boat. Julie is saddened, stunned and thrown into a state of confusion, as is her daughter Meiko, who has been visiting on a break from Medical School in California. Then a weasel, lawyer type shows up at their boat and tells Julie that it's been confiscated under Trinidadian law, because of bills that her husband hadn't paid. She has only a short time to get her stuff off the boat that is her home and to presumedly leave the country. And she does leave the country. She and Meiko sneak their boat out in the middle of the night. However, the women don't really know how to sail. They had been living in the Yacht Club, tied to a slip, for the last couple of years, refitting and making the boat ready to go on a round the world cruise that never seemed to happen. And to make matters just a little worse for Julie and Meiko, a no goodnik, who has designs on Meiko, offers to help them sail the boat out of the country. But unknown to Julie, she has been the victim of evil drug smugglers who happen to own a shipyard. These no good rats have stuffed her boat full of cocaine and cash and had planned on Julie and her husband sailing it unsuspected into the States, where they would retrieve their money and drugs. But once her husband was gone, they reacted quickly, trying to get her boat by legal means. So they are pretty doggone upset when she runs away. However, also unknown to Julie and Meiko, the guy helping them is part of the drug dealing cartel. So with a spy on board and bad drug smugglers in hot pursuit, these two women, who don't know a bowline from a lasso, have to not only learn to sail like the wind, but they have to do it very, very fast, because there is trouble up ahead and it's blowing their way at about a hundred miles an hour. This book is a real grabber and a fun read. Mr. Stewart writes a good sailboat story, moreover he writes about hurricanes like he has actually been there. I know he made me feel as if I were living through one. I felt the wind, heard it howl. I saw the churning seas, the bending trees, the destruction, the terror, the relief when it was over. And, of course, I'm a sucker for the kind of story with a strong heroine, so when you throw in a sailboat and a lot of action, you have everything I need in a story. Five stars from Captain Katie. Review submitted by Captain Katie Osborne

Julie Tanaka is married to an older Japanese man named Hideo and they live on a sailboat in Trinidad in the Caribbean. Her daughter Meiko is visiting from California when the police come by the marina and tell Julie that Hideo had been killed delivering a sailboat when the boat blew up. Bill Broxton is a DEA agent and he believes Hideo Tanaka was delivering drugs along with the sailboat and that rival drug smugglers murdered him along with the crew on the drug running sailboat. Unknown to Julie the drug smugglers her husband had been working for have hidden a large supply of their illegal cargo aboard her boat. The drug lords try to legally seize the boat, claiming bad debts, but Julie and Meiko smuggle the boat out of the country in the middle of the night. It's not long before the smugglers are hot on their trail and in short order Broxton is chasing after the smugglers, and their all charging head long into a hurricane. Jack Stewart has written a tightly plotted, tense, action-packed thriller that I started reading on the train to work, picked up again on the train home and finished before I went to bed. It's just a super book that I can't recommend highly enough. Reviewed by Judianne

Julie Tanaka lives on a sailboat in the Caribbean with her husband Hideo. Hideo is away delivering a boat to California. Her daughter Meiko, on break from medical school is visiting when police come by the marina with the sad news that her husband has been killed in California. Unknown to Julie, Hideo had been delivering a boat load of cocaine to the United States and that plenty of drugs are hidden aboard her boat as well. Bill Broxton is the DEA agent who is invistigation her husband's death. At first he believes Julie must somehow be in on the drug smuggling, but after meeting her he quickly changes his mind. Someone tries to kill him after he questions Julie and Meiko and all of a sudden Broxton knows that investigating a crime in the Caribbean is a little different than in America. In the Caribbean the criminals aren't the least bit shy about attacking the police and in no time at all Broxton finds himself in a tight frame with the cops after him. Meanwhile, Julie and Meiko are on the run, sailing from island to island with the drug smugglers always close behind and behind the smugglers, Broxton with a smuggler of his own. Can Broxton and his new found pal, T-Bone Powers, a drug smuggling pirate with an attitude, get to the women in time to save them? And then of course there is the little matter of the Hurricane bearing down on them. HURRICANE, Jack Stewart's second Caribbean thriller, is chock-a-block full of suspense, terrific sailing scenes, nasty Caribbean weather, nastier Caribbean bad guys and a couple of women in trouble that you'll never forget. Ms. Mindy Adams