Tough talk, graphic violence and psychopaths you love to hate are just part of doing business in Rowe's debut novel. Trust me, you really do not want to "do" lunch with this bunch.

Right from the explosive opening, the reader is in for a rough ride. And while I normally do not like plot lines that are punctuated with body parts, I have to say this book was hard to put down. The trouble begins with the meeting of two FBI retirees, buddies with family ties. They are left over from the old days in the bureau when the lines between legal and illegal rights of suspects were less tidy than the current ACLU would appreciate.

Jack Fontana, who did some hard time for stepbrother Matt Shannon, is out to collect for the favor of replacing him as a "defrocked drug agent in a state penitentiary." A cruise ship is the target. Columbian drug money is the payoff.

The fun begins with a nice game of "blow-up the barge in a busy canal." Like bungee jumping with a long cord over a shallow pool of hungry sharks, the reader is pushed over and over again to a breath-hitching crisis, and then jerked back just in time only to do it all over again. The cast of characters include the stepbrothers, a nurse/call girl, an accountant/diamond thief, a Marxist airline hijacker/armored car heister, two professional murderers with attitudes, and a former mermaid with the Weeki Wachee Spring Water Show in south Florida.

Read FEVER if you have strong nerves. Turn off the cell phone, pull the blinds and block out some time. Once you begin, you won't want to stop.