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.
Matt "Loose Cannon" Shannon is an ex-FBI agent turned head
of security for the world's largest cruise line. It's a
career move that owes more to his predilection for the
bottle and a few well hidden skeletons than his fondness
for the Miami sun.
In the novel's explosive opening, Shannon's stepbrother,
Jack Fontana, puts his back against the wall. At a
waterfront reunion, Fontana gives Shannon what looks like a
game controller-and before he knows what he's done, Shannon
has sunk a freighter in Miami's shipping lane and his
fingerprints are all over the device that sent the signal.
Only once he's cornered does Shannon learn his
stepbrother's real plan-a cruise ship job that could make
enough money to last their lifetimes. Shannon thinks he's
only providing backup and intelligence. And by the time he
learns what's really going on, he's in too deep: the cruise
ship has been hijacked and several people are already dead.
FEVER is the story of Shannon's race to unravel the deadly
labyrinth. With the help of a mysterious woman and his own
instincts, he finds the one path that might allow him to
survive.
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