Gold Bay is the second of a thriller series featuring tough ex-Navy SEAL Adam Weldon and beautiful undercover FBI agent Tripnee.

Adam’s uncle, Peace (an ex-Zen monk) has been kidnapped and Tripnee has also disappeared.

Adam’s search, mainly undertaken on his 70ft high tech yacht Dream Voyager, leads him to uncover a network of corruption and intimidation so pervasive as to threaten the future survival of the way of life within the Bay community and the whole fabric of American society – all the way to the White House.

Adam has unresolved issues from this childhood and needs to understand his uncle’s role as standing for a different set of values and life choices.

William McGinnis is a California native and I enormously enjoyed his portrayal of San Francisco Bay, particularly the central area where most of the action takes place.

His characters tend to be very rich, very poor, very beautiful, very ruthless: both the action and the boats are relentlessly high-speed.

McGinnis is also an expert in whitewater rafting.

This underpins a thrilling sequence on the bow-wave of a container ship heading out into the Pacific on its journey back to Asia.

In general boats are a means of transport and intimidation – and high-speed chases – rather than central to the plot.

The story plays out in the waterside houses of the rich and within the preposterous antics of new age cults and dodgy philanthropists.

I found it escapist, amusing and highly readable.

Buy Gold Bay from Amazon (UK)

Buy Gold Bay from Amazon (US)

Cyclops Conspiracy

Cyclops Conspiracy, the most recently published Adam Weldon title, is set mainly in the Greek Islands (aptly with a copy of Rod Heikell’s Greek Waters Pilot ready to hand).

Adam and Tripnee are joined on Dream Voyager by Sonia, an Interpol agent who is also a ‘drone falconer’.

Personal relationships are tense.

The enemies are jihadists and the level of violence tended to exceed my personal tolerance levels, even in a thriller where, yet again, the survival of the world is at stake.

Cyclops Conspiracy is also published by Whitewater £11.69 paperback £0.77 Kindle

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