From Publisher's
Weekly
Cover blurbs link this debut
thriller to the recent nonfiction bestsellers Into Thin Air and
The Perfect Storm, but its real ancestors are the expertly crafted
nautical adventures of Hammond Innes. Like Innes, professional
seaman Garrison creates characters who are unique and then puts
them into situations full of believable peril. Do-gooder physicians
Sarah and Michael Stone and their 10-year-old daughter, Ronnie,
seem to have an ideal life: they sail the rugged waters of the
Pacific in their hospital ship, "an elderly, sun-bleached
38-foot Nautor Swan," bringing medicine to islands off the
trade routes. One day, just as they are about to put in at a remote
atoll, a giant ship carrying liquefied nitrogen gas radios an
SOS: its captain has been seriously injured in a fall. The doctors
split up. Sarah drops Michael off and heads for the nearby carrier
-- which promptly scoops up the sailboat and steams away while
Michael watches, helpless, from shore. After this smashing start,
Garrison piles on even more empathy, action and suspense. On board
the carrier, a gnarled, fascinating old China hand is suffering
from botched surgery to remove a bullet. While Sarah works to
keep him alive, his very nasty bodyguard uses violence to keep
the crewand Sarah and Ronniefrom finding out where the valuable,
dangerous cargo is headed. Meanwhile, Michael repairs an islander's
canoe and sails for Palau, where a friendly local politician discovers
that Dr. Stone has a very good reason for not calling in the U.S.
Navy to help him recover his wife, daughter and sailboat. Instead,
Michael recruits a team of Chinese gangsters (and one stranded
female American ex-cop) to go after the kidnappers in a fast-forward
showdown that takes him to Hong Kong, Shanghai and Tokyo. Garrison
writes about these exotic people and places with immense vigor;
it's no wonder that Disney optioned the book for a cool million.
From
Kirkus Reviews
A highly accomplished debut avenger,
enlivened with conflicted characters and a barnacle-encrusted
view of the world. First-novelist Garrison here takes the Elmore
Leonard formula: resourceful good folks up against a pair of bad
guys, one physically threatening, the other criminally ingenious
to a Pacific island setting. The Stone family—American Michael,
his South African wife Sarah, and their precocious ten-year-old
daughter Ronnie—sail among the Pacific's forgotten islands,
swapping their medical expertise for fuel and supplies. After
putting Michael ashore on a tiny atoll to help a dying Micronesian
islander, Sarah and Ronnie answer a distress call from a large
tanker and find themselves hauled aboard. As the tanker steams
away with them, Michael chases in the islander's battered outrigger—and
suffers every variety of high-seas bad luck imaginable (he loses
his compass; the boom snaps back and knocks him out cold, and
so on). At the same time, Sarah is forced by the menacing Moss
to tend the gunshot wounds of 78-year-old "Mr. Jack"
Powell. Mr. Jack, who has more than a grudge against Japan, plans
to take his tanker, filled with highly combustible, supercooled
liquid natural gas, into Tokyo Bay, where he'll blow everything
sky- high. He's betting that the catastrophe will cripple the
nation's economy. But first he must contend with Michael, who
not only manages to track the tanker but wins back both boat and
wife—only to have the wily Mr. Jack handcuff himself to Ronnie
as security. Meanwhile, Garrison's take on boat-bum life is grim
and fascinating: Sudden death lurks behind spectacular scenery,
and every psyche is burdened with an unresolvedconflict. Thus,
Michael and Sarah go once more into the breech (and the bilge)
to save their daughter, and millions of Japanese, from becoming
freeze-dried flambé. Nautical lore, colorful island types,
dramatic plotting, and blessedly restrained prose.
