Hurricane

Rating:
Summary: Broxton is Back, Hooray!
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Hurricane and Diamond Sky, Art All the Way
Review: I first met Ken Douglas at a Mexican party on Great White Wonder, the sixty-foot racing sloop he used to own. His boat was chock-a-block full of cruising sailors, inside and on the deck. Simpson Bay on the Dutch side of St. Martin really rocked that night. I met Jack Priest for the first time at that party as well.

Later they invited me to join their writer's group, a group of cruising writers that met every Wednesday at a sailor's bar called Lagoonies. We'd get together, read some stuff we'd written, talk about future projects, help each other get our stories in the Caribbean boating magazines.

It was there that I read the first draft for Ken and Jack's book, DIAMOND SKY. I swear, never did you meet two fast friends who argued so much. Ken wanted the book to go one way, Jack another. So they compromised and came up with a fine effort, but Jack's British and until recently been alone for awhile, so he's kind of used to getting his way. He liked DIAMOND SKY, but he really despises drug smugglers, so all the while they were working on SKY, he was also working on HURRICANE. That's why it's got some similar scenes and some of the same characters, like that lovable pirate T-Bone, who stays with the story till the very end in HURRICANE.

I can see why Ms. Sane (see Stephanie Sane's review posted below), was confused. I agree with her that they are both good books, but I disagree when she says you should only buy one and leave the other on the shelf. I've read both, enjoyed both and well read both again, but maybe I'm biased because I live on a boat. Both these books, especially HURRICANE, capture the essence of what cruising life is all about, although they do it with a darn sight more adventure than I see in an average day.

Both books are non-stop, pulse-racing, nail-biting, thrillers. They have bad guys galore, good guys too and terrific heroines. My advice, read DIAMOND SKY first, then read HURRICANE and see how Jack changed it to make it his very own story. Diamond smugglers who rely on children to mine their evil diamonds are lower than a snake's belly. Drug smugglers are even lower than that. And in these two books you get to see plenty of both get their just deserts.

Haley Lawford, S/V Cheerleader Too

Rating:
Summary: Stop the Presses!
Review: I goofed. I'm the girl who edited HURRICANE, so you can imagine how badly I felt after a friend called me and told me to read Ravenous Reader's review. The first thing I did was get a copy of the book and start looking for those stupid mistakes an eighth grader couldn't miss, cuz, you know, I passed the eighth grade, even though I have some friends who would swear otherwise. And sure enough, I found seven typos I should have caught and I'll bet when I read it through again, I'll find still more.

Then I e-mailed Mr. Stewart and told him how badly I messed up. I also told him we were going to immediately go over the whole book and send it back to the printer's, sans errors. No sleep for this girl until that book is fixed. Boy, am I lucky he's a good guy. He e-mailed me back and said not to sweat it. Well, I am sweating it. I feel horrible, like I let him and his readers down. I just don't know how I could have messed up so badly. HURRICANE is an excellent and thrilling story. I'm so sorry, but rest assured, in no time at all, it'll be error free, then I'll be able to hold my head up again.

Kelly Irish
The Bootleg Girl

Rating:
Summary: HURRICANE and DIAMOND SKY, Is It Cheating or is it Art?
Review: I read DIAMOND SKY by Ken Douglas and Jack Stewart first, then I did HURRICANE, a solo effort by Mr. Stewart that was written before DIAMOND SKY, and the similarities between the two books was scary, bordering on plagiarism, but I guess Mr. Stewart can't steal from himself. And in all fairness I should say that Bootleg Press solicited this review after reading what I wrote about one of their other books. They said that I was critical, but fair and that's what I'm going to try to be here.

DIAMOND SKY opens with our heroines, Beth and Noelle Shannon on an island off the eastern coast of Trinidad. Noelle, eight years younger than Beth, is her step-daughter. Beth's husband Frank is snorkling in the ocean. Noelle discovers a dead body, Frank has a heart attack and dies. The women take the body home to California for burial, are met by homicide cop Billy Wolfe who is investigating the multiple murders of Frank's Boss, his wife and Noelle's mother. Wolfe believes that somehow Frank's heart attack must be connected. After the funeral the woman go back to Trinidad, where they find that a shipyard wants to seize the sailing yacht that Frank and Beth lived on for past debts. Beth knows they owed no money, so the two women sneak the boat out of the country, but after the first day away, they meet up with Noelle's boyfriend, who is really working for the evil men that want to take the boat away.

HURRICANE opens with Blonde and blue-eyed Julie Tanake (a Caucasian American who is married to a much older Japanese man named Hideo) and her daughter Meiko, zooming around by an island of the eastern coast of Trinidad with their friend, local singing star, Tammy Drake. Tammy falls in, grabs on to what she thinks is a floating log, but it turns out to be a dead body. The women go back to the boat that Julie and Hideo live on, only to be greeted by the police and American DEA agent Bill Broxton, who tell them that Hideo has been killed in California while he was delivering a sailboat. Then they find that a local shipyard wants to seize Julie's floating home for past debts that Julie knows are bogus. So, you guessed it, Julie and Meiko sneak the boat out of the country and are joined by Meiko's sneaky boyfriend who is in cahoots with the bad guys.

In DIAMOND SKY the bad guys are Russian Mafia types. The dead Frank Shannon had been working for them and had stollen a fortune of their illegal conflict diamonds and had hidden them on the boat. The women don't know this, the bad guys do. California cop Billy Wolfe flies to Trinidad, finds out the Russians are after our girls and teams up with pirate type, drug smuggler T-Bone Powers to try and get to the woman via sailboat before the evil Russians can find and kill them.

In HURRICANE the bad guys are German mob types. The dead Hideo Tanaka had been knowingly or unknowingly working for the Salizar drug cartel which is in partnership with the German owned shipyard. There is a fortune worth of cocaine hidden away on the boat. The women don't know this, the bad guys do. DEA agent Bill Broxton teams up with pirate type, drug smuggler T-Bone Powers to try and get to the woman via sailboat before the evil Germans can find and kill them.

I'll admit that there is a whole heck of a lot of other stuff going on that differs and that with the exception of the very likable T-Bone character, the lowdown boyfriend Victor and a few minor walk ons, the people are different. But as you can see the plot so far is pretty much the same. From here on though we come to a fork in the road. The DIAMOND SKY girls get themselves to California where they are menaced by bad guys and the HURRICANE girls sail on up to Saint Martin in the Dutch West Indies, where they are menaced by both bad guys and a Hurricane.

I won't spoil any endings here, but I will tell you that they are different. The characters in both books are well drawn. The action in both is superb. They are pulse-racing thrillers that will keep you up on the sleepiest of nights. I loved them both, but my advice to you is to flip a coin, buy one and leave the other on the shelf.

Reviewed by Stephanie Sane

Rating:
Summary: Can Broxton Save the Girls before they are Swept Away?
Review: Julie Tanaka and her daughter Meiko are on the run from Cocaine smugglers in the Caribbean. The smugglers, who belong to a drug cartel, have hidden cocaine on their sailboat and their plan was to get the boat from the woman by legal means after some boat repairs were done in Trinidad. But the women figured it out and sailed away before they could take it. This is bad for the smugglers, the woman taking off with their cocaine, so they give chase.

DEA agent Bill Broxton has been framed by the smugglers, so he has a score to settle, but he wants to save Julie and Meiko too, so he teams up with a Caribbean type outlaw and goes after the smugglers, hoping to get to them before they harm Julie and Meiko. And if that isn't enough going on, there is big, bad Hurricane Darlene to consider as she makes her way across the Atlantic, headed toward the Caribbean Sea and two women who are running for their lives.

HURRICANE is an excellent woman in trouble type thriller that has a lot of Caribbean scenery and sailboat sailing action in it. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading the book and I think you will be too. Broxton is a great character and I was glad to be able to read about him again.

Rating:
Summary: Bad Guys Closing in and a Hurricane on the Way!
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Tense, Action-Packed Thriller
Review: 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 Judith Ann Cole

Rating:
Summary: If the Drug Smugglers don't get them, the Hurricane will
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: On the Run from the DEA, Drug Smugglers and a Hurricane
Review: Like my reviews of the other Jack Stewart books, I have to start out by mentioning that the author and I are very good friends, so of course my review of this Caribbean adventure may be biased. It wouldn't be fair if I didn't state that right from the get go, otherwise it would be like cheating, or a blatant, underhanded, sneaky promotional trick. So before I go any farther, let me tell you that I'm giving this book five stars. Don't get me wrong, it's a wonderful story and I truly believe it merits each and every one of those stars, but can you just imagine my reception the next time I was aboard Jack's boat if I didn't like his book and wrote so here. Why, I bet he'd serve me the cheap rum instead of the good stuff, then he'd probably make me walk the plank. So it's a gosh darned good thing that I loved every page of HURRICANE. Yeah, it's a good thing, really. (...) I loved it, but I'll remind you again, Jack Stewart is a good friend of mine, so take my review with a grain of salt, however if you try this book, I really do believe that you'll like it.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Rating:
Summary: Exciting but pitifully edited!
Review: This is just a note for those of you who are bothered by "little things".

Others have told you what the book is about and it was an exciting and absorbing story, written in a simple, straightforward manner!

Even so I almost pitched it in the trash after the first 50 pages because of the distracting publishing errors. I don't really know what to call these errors but they are the type of errors we make when we use a spell-checker to check our email: it will approve a word as long as it is a word whether it makes sense or not ("through" instead of "though").

There are LOTS of those errors, mostly in the beginning. Many people will probably overlook them in favor of pursuing the story but it made me mad to have paid $15 for a book that an eighth-grader could have corrected.

How hard can it be to proof-read a book before it is published?