From
Publisher's Weekly
The salt spray flies in this ocean-soaked
adventure thriller by a writer (Red Sky at Morning) who really
knows the sea. Physical training expert Jim Leighton knows nothing
about sailing boats, but signs on for what should be a pleasant
and profitable body-conditioning six-week ocean voyage to Rio
as the personal trainer of an elderly and eccentric capitalist,
Will Spark. They will sail alone on Spark's new diesel-powered
sailboat, the Hustle.
But Jim soon finds himself on a wilder ride
than he had expected, forced to crisscross the Atlantic to escape
Will's implacable enemies. Garrison paints a somber picture of
rampaging capitalism, with financial predators stopping at nothing
to acquire power. In Nigeria, one of Will's former lovers is hired
to murder Will; he kills her, but is seriously hurt. With Will
sidelined, Jim learns much about sailing as they recross the Atlantic
to Brazil.
Meanwhile, Jim keeps getting e-mail updates
from Shannon Riley, the woman he loves back in Connecticut, who
researches the checkered past of his likable but devious employer.
A man of many aliases, Spark is being pursued by the ruthless
and powerful McVay Humane Foundation, whose directors want the
microprocessors he has invented, which may be inserted into the
bloodstream to detect and counteract a number of physical problems,
so are worth a fortune.
There are surprising revelations as the trip
gets deadlier and the harried sailors flee to the Falklands and
skirt Antarctica. Garrison ratchets up the suspense in deft segments,
and his portrait of an angry sea is fully alive, from nights of
star-filled beauty to tornadolike waterspouts and hazardous ice
floes.
(Feb.)
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
From
Kirkus Reviews (a starred review)
Garrison surpasses his first seafaring
thriller (Fire and Ice, 1998) with a grippingly realistic cross-Atlantic
chase for stolen technology that doubles as a winning tale of
mentor-pupil redemption. Yes, it isn't quite believable that Jim
Leighton, a muscular but somewhat feckless personal trainer from
Connecticut, thinks he's making easy money to accompany aging
millionaire Will Sparks on a carefree sail from Barbados to Rio
de Janeiro. The occasional trite phrase ("the huge catamaran
careened, as out of control as an unexamined life") doesn't
help either as we learn that not only is Jim leaving behind Shannon,
the woman he wants to marry, but he's also completely ignorant
of sailing and finds himself horribly seasick on Sparks's 50-foot
yacht, even while talking the millionaire through a stationary-bike
spinning session.
But things pick up when Sparks discovers that
the bad guys are on his tail and heads the ship for Africa to
escape vicious Andy Nickels, a henchman for the super-rich McVay
clan. Led by preppy Lloyd and his ice queen daughter Val, the
McVays want some crucial gadget that Sparks has, and to get it
back they'll chase him through the Bight of Benin and farther
down the African coast to Antarctic ice flows.
Garrison adds skewed family values-unresolved
complexities haunt Jim's and Shannon's pasts-as Jim gains his
sea legs and learns to trust Sparks, who can't quite reveal every
secret before he dies, leaving Jim to puzzle through numerous
conflicting loyalties and nautical calamities, including a clever
climax in which he learns, quite literally, to swim with the sharks.
Action-filled, wave-pounding page-turner.
From
the Rocky Mountain News
Seventy percent of the Earth's surface is covered by water, yet
70 percent of thrillers are set in courtrooms. There would seem
to be a wide-open opportunity for authors looking for something
different. Paul Garrison is, thus, in the vanguard of adventure
writers rediscovering what Jules Verne and other 18th century
writers knew: the oceans hold plenty of suspenseful potential.
Grade: A- —Peter Mergendahl
Rocky Mountain News
