Customer Reviews

Hurricane

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This an exciting book which reads quickly. It seems a bit dated -- the sort
of book that might have been written for one of the paperback mills in the 1960's -- but it is enjoyable and makes for a good beach or vacation read. A surprising number of people get killed...

Hideo Tanaka is working for a Trinidadian shipyard when the boat he is delivering from the Caribbean to California blows up of the Southern California coast. When the authorities investigate they find that the boat was being used to smuggle drugs into the United States. Suspecting that this is just the tip of the iceberg, the DEA sends Bill Broxton to Trinidad, where he discovers Tanaka's American born wife Julie and her step-daughter Meiko living on a sailboat in the yacht club there. Julie and Meiko are novice sailors, in fact they don't know much about sailing at all.

Right after Broxton questions the two women a local lawyer tries to serve papers to Julie. He claims the boat has been confiscated because of shipyard bills owed. Julie and Meiko don't believe him and they leave the country during the darkness of night, however what they don't know is that the owner of the shipyard is behind the cocaine smuggling and he sends some very bad people out after them.

Meanwhile Broxton has been framed for murder and getting caught and jailed in Trinidad is the last thing he wants, so he too sneaks out of the country, both running from the law and chasing after the bad guys who are after the good girls. I hope that's not too confusing for you, it makes a lot more sense when you're reading it, which I did in two sittings. You should check this book out, I think you'll like it.

"Hurricane" is about two daring women who are running from dangerous drug smugglers in the Caribbean. Beth and her step-daughter Noel, who is only a few years younger than Beth, are left with only their sailboat when Beth's husband dies of a heart attack in Trinidad. What the women don't know is that members of the Salizar Drug Cartel have hidden a small fortune's worth of cocaine aboard. The smugglers try to get the boat by legal means, but the women sneak the boat out of the country during the night and the chase is on. This exciting thriller will get your heart a beating to beat the band, that's for sure. I loved it and I think you will too.

DEA agent Bill Broxton is in the Caribbean investigating the mysterious death of Julie Tanaka's husband, who died on a sailboat full of cocaine. Meanwhile drug smugglers have hidden their white powder on the sailboat Julie lives on with her husband and they try to seize her boat, but she and her daughter sail away in the middle of the night. The smugglers are quickly after her and Broxton is just as quickly after them as they all sail toward a hurricane. This was a quick and exciting read that I enjoyed very much and I think you will too.

Mr. Stewart has nailed what makes a thriller a thriller in my opinion. Women on the run who we care for. Bad guys who we fear and a tough but flawed hero with a likable sidekick. Plus he set his thriller in the Caribbean, a place I've longed to visit. Now I feel as if I've been there, but maybe after reading his book, when I actually do get there, I just might pass on the sailboat stuff. Sounds just a bit to scary for me. Good book, lots of action. You can smell the ocean with this one. Really!

Ken Douglas is an excellent, though unheralded, author. His books are exciting and intense and each one I have read has held my attention from beginning to end. Ken is also somewhat prolific and eclectic in his genres. Ken originally released this book under the pseudonym of Jack Stewart to help keep genres separate. I think that the three Douglas books I have read so far bear the Douglas style, regardless of the pen name used.

Julie Tanaka's husband died in a boat explosion. Julie is in shock when DEA agent Bill Broxton shows up at the dock with questions about her husband and why he was on a boat with known drug traffickers. Julie later learns that the explosion and subsequent sinking of the boat also caused the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs. Julie's shock increases when a man appears the next day with papers that permit him to take her boat, Fallen Angel. Fortunately, a police officer who happened to be there about a body that Julie and her daughter, Meiko, saw the day before stops the man from taking her boat. The police officer kindly suggests that she leave immediately if she wants to keep her boat. Thus begins 329 pages of sea chases, interrupted only briefly by shore action.

It makes little sense to Julie as to why so many people want Fallen Angel. It is just a boat. Of course, if there is something valuable on the boat, that could explain all the interest. Then there was the coin that Meiko found on a small island near Trinidad. It seems that the same people interested in Fallen Angel are also interested in the coin. Why would anyone want a coin, though it did have some numbers inscribed on it?

Julie and Meiko have little time to ponder their unanswered questions because they need to run from the numerous people after their boat, and now them. It seems fortuitous that Victor, someone Meiko likes, is willing to help them get their boat away from Trinidad. It seems that someone has sabotaged Fallen Angel and it is only with a little luck and quick thinking that Julie, Meiko and Victor are able to continue. Except, Julie thinks there is something strange about Victor. She is even more convinced when the Fallen Angel's diesel engine starts showing signs of trouble and Victor flies back to Trinidad, supposedly to get a diesel mechanic. A local mechanic solves the problem within a couple of hours and Fallen Angel is nearly as good as new, except for other things that someone might have sabotaged.

Bill Broxton has problems of his own. One minute he is a DEA agent. The next minute, multiple people are trying to kill him and someone is trying to frame him for something. One thing is sure; Bill Broxton is no longer a DEA agent. Instead, he is now a criminal on the run from law enforcement as well as drug lords. Fortunately, many good people in the world have little use for either drug lords or crooked law enforcement and Bill Broxton and Julie Tanaka get help from quite a few of those good people. They will need all the help they can get.

The chase is fast and furious and there are many narrow escapes as Julie and Meiko barely dodge their pursuers time after time. Bill Broxton has similar narrow escapes, but he has a better handle on who is on his side and who is not. Julie, Meiko and Bill will be much better sailors at the end of their journeys, a necessity in view of the prolonged chase.

Lingering in the background is a hurricane with 150 mile per hour winds, a hurricane that could scour islands clean and send boats of all types to the bottom.

Ken Douglas grabbed my attention at the very beginning of this book. I originally planned to read the first chapter to get an idea of the plot. When I realized I had reached page 68, I knew I had to stop for a while because I had something else I was supposed to be doing. However, I made time for this book and finished it in two days, which is relatively fast for me considering the length of this book. Every time I put this book down, I wanted to come back to it to see what happened next, particularly to Julie and Meiko.

The only problem I have with books by Ken Douglas is that I am going to run out of adjectives in discussing his books. In the books I have read by Ken Douglas thus far, Douglas has been consistent in writing exciting stories that refuse to permit me to put the book down. I hope that each subsequent book I read is as exciting as those I have read thus far.

Is this book, and Douglas's other books, of a style that some people might consider pulp fiction? I think while the excitement is similar to that of pulp fiction stories, I think the development of Julie's character, especially in her admission of shortcomings and willingness to take help when appropriate, and her vast ability to learn and grow, pushes this book into a different realm from pulp fiction. The story has all the excitement and enthusiasm of pulp fiction mated with a deeper story and a reasonable amount of character development, never allowing the story to bog down.

I remember when I first began to read books by Dean Koontz. His writing and his stories captured me and held my attention for hundreds of pages. I get similar excitement from books written by Ken Douglas. I look forward to reading more by Ken Douglas, whom I have to believe has an exciting career as an author ahead of him.

Enjoy!

My thanks to the author for providing me with a review copy of his book.

When Julie Tanaka's husband is killed in a boating accident she is devastated, but before she can grieve, DEA agent Bill Broxton shows up at her sailboat at the Trinidad and Tobago Yacht Club Marina. Broxton wants to know about her husband and cocaine smuggling. After he leaves an attorney shows up with papers saying she has to surrender her boat to pay off her husband's debts.

With her stepdaughter Meiko, Julie slips the boat out of it's slip after dark in an attempt to flee Trinidad and save her only asset, her boat. However, some very bad people want her boat and they take off after her. Broxton does too. Can Julie and Meiko, a pair of inexperienced sailors, survive long enough to find out why they are being pursued?

I couldn't put this book down. I liked the two women Julie and Meiko a lot. I liked the adventure at sea aspect of the story and I thought the ending was very satisfying.

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 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 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.

Sometimes I like to read a thriller that takes place in the city, in a place I'm familiar with, because it's easier to identify with the characters, good and bad. But sometimes I like to be taken away to an exotic place, a place where everything is new to me and that's what happens here in "Hurricane," a thriller that takes place in the Caribbean. I liked the atmosphere of the book the characters and the sailing action.

Bill Broxton is a DEA agent who made his debut in "Scorpion" is back and he's investigating the death of Hideo Tanaka, a Japanese American, off the coast of California. His American wife Julie and their daughter Meiko are living on a sailboat in the Caribbean, waiting for Hideo to come back from his boat delivery job, but instead they get news of his death, but before the women get time to grieve, a boatyard wants to confiscate their sailing home because of Hideo's unpaid bills. And it turns out that not only did he apparently owe money, but that he might have been involved with a drug cartel and also that maybe he wasn't just delivering a boat to the States, but drugs as well.

Julie and Meiko flee in their sailboat, thinking the boatyard wants the boat for the unpaid bills that were not really owed, but actually the drug cartel has hidden lots of cocaine on board and they want it back. Broxton and a very likeable drug smuggler take off after the women to try and save them, but unknown to them all a Hurricane is on the way.

This was an exciting read and as I said above, it took me away from the world I live in. I liked the characters of Julie and Meiko very much and I liked DEA agent Bill Broxton too, but I liked the smuggler T-Bone best of all. And that's what really did it for me with this book, characters I cared about.

Blonde and blue-eyed Julie Tanaka lives on a sailboat called "Fallen Angel," in the Trinidad and Tobago Yacht Club in the West Indies. As the story opens we find her piloting a dinghy through the calm waters off the coast of Trinidad. Her mind somewhere else, when her eighteen-year-old daughter Meiko shouts, "Look out!" Julie sees the log, makes a sharp turn to avoid it and passenger and local singing star Tammy Drake falls overboard. She can't swim, but she manages to make the log. Then she screams, lets go and starts floundering.

Julie gets the dinghy under control, comes around and Meiko pulls Tammy into the rubber boat. "It's a dead man." Tammy says and Julie brings the dinghy over to have a look. Sure enough it's a waterlogged, bloated body. They try to tow it to shore, can't, so they head back to the Yacht Club to call the police, only to find them already waiting. They have bad news. Julie's husband, delivery skipper Hideo Tanaka, had been killed when the sailboat boat he was delivering to California blew up. Julie and Meiko are devastated. The police leave and DEA agent Bill Broxton arrives. It turns out that unknown to Julie, her husband was delivering a boat load of cocaine and the DEA believes her husband was murdered. Julie gets rid of Broxton, telling him she'll talk tomorrow, then a lawyer shows up with papers to seize the boat. Seems like a local German owned shipyard wants it for moneys owed. Julie knows their bills were paid, so she and her daughter sail out of the country without telling the authorities.

The German owned shipyard is really a front for delivering cocaine to the United States. They fiberglass the drug into the hull, hide more in the mast. Then they let the unsuspecting boat owner take his boat back to the States, where they remove the drugs, with nobody the wiser. Sometimes using the same boat over and over again. That was what they'd done with the boat Hideo had been delivering to California and that was what they'd done to "Fallen Angel." Julie however, doesn't have a clue and she's just sailed off with a boatload of drugs the German crooks want back. The Germans are ruthless. They've killed before and won't be shy about doing it again.

Broxton knows this, but can he stop the killers before they get to the women. And oh yes, I can't forget to mention that as the women are sailing away with both the German bad guys and Broxton chasing their wake, Hurricane Darlene is bearing down on the Caribbean with a vengence and she doesn't care who's been good, who's been bad, who's been naughty and who's been nice. She is an equal opportunity destroyer.

And there you have a short summation of the first half of the book or so. I loved it and if you try it, I really do believe you'll like it, too.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene