With this thriller full of many original and violent moments of action, mostly at sea, Eidson (One Bad Thing; Frames per Second) introduces a powerful new series that could kick his career into high gear. Jack Merchant, a DEA agent who took early retirement after a disastrous operation, lives on the Lila, his 40-foot sloop docked in the marina at Charlestown, a Boston suburb where he once spent a year drastically culling the drug dealer herd and making lots of enemies-a fact that will soon both haunt and help him. The Lila soaks up every cent he makes as a photographer, and when Sarah Ballard, a woman from his past now running her father's old business of repossessing boats for banks, comes to him with an offer of work tracking down a missing couple and their expensive yacht, he finds himself intrigued-and attracted by Sarah. But she's been through some terrifying times, and Jack quickly realizes "she wasn't looking for hugs and kisses." A lot of the book's strength comes from the way Eidson makes Sarah's roughness and coldness inevitable and convincing. Exceptionally interesting minor players include a cowardly, conniving banker and a dangerously psychotic software tycoon and his virtually invincible "handyman." With a smart new publisher, Eidson seems set for some smooth sailing. (June 1) Forecast: The resemblance of Merchant and Ballard to another Boston-based duo with a push-pull relationship-Dennis Lehane's Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennar-can only help, as will the blurbs from William G. Tapply, Robert B. Parker and Peter Straub. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Having blotted his copybook, ex-DEA agent Jack Merchant is spending early retirement desultorily skippering his sloop Lila in and around the marinas of Charleston, Mass., looking forward to not much. His life is on hold: He knows it, hates it, seems stuck with it until the sudden entrance of repo woman Sarah Ballard, holder of past due "bank paper" on the Lila. Sarah and Jack are not strangers to each other. Five years after their paths crossed in a way that brought them close for a while, Sarah’s used the threat of repossession as an obvious pretext to engineer a reunion because she needs Jack’s help. Owner of a struggling business, she’s a make-or-break client with an assignment she fears might be too great a stretch. MassBank wants her to find bank VP Paul Baylor and his wife, a thoroughly respectable, well-heeled young couple who’ve made off in their boat, very possibly with a pile of MassBank cash. Get results in a week, Sarah’s been told, or consider yourself repo non grata. Teaming up efficiently, Sarah and Jack locate the Baylors, but that proves much easier than tangling with the spider they find at work, perverted, pernicious, poisonous, weaving his tangled web for the Baylors--and, as it turns out, for Sarah and Jack as well. Expert prose, brisk pacing, and a complex plot. But what really makes this first of a series Edison’s (Frames Per Second, 1999, etc.) best yet are the flawed, hurt, exceptionally sympathetic central players.
