Publisher's Synopsis
The characters in this novel were originally developed in "Wild World", published through Kindle in 2012.
This novel focuses initially on the angsts of Professor Arthur Crawford whose life in Winnipeg was crashing down on him. His home life had broken down over the summer of 2013; his teaching and mentoring of students at a local university was creating havoc on campus; and his earlier experience dabbling in crime at the expense of couple of local villains had nearly cost him his life. There was no doubt that he needed big changes in his life.
Abruptly in December 2013, the Professor left his tenured university position, his city, and his friends to strike out for points unknown. While he wasn't being chased out of Winnipeg by anyone in particular, he thought it best to travel anonymously, first by bus to Toronto and then onto a small town in Kentucky. There he visited an old friend from McGill's graduate school who had settled and created a life much different than that he imagined when the two of them hung around student quarters. Not surprisingly, this reunion didn't last long.
Unbeknownst to the Professor, his crossing of the border at Buffalo had been spotted by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency whose comprehensive database had marked his activity in Winnipeg at the time his criminal acquaintances had helped steal missiles wanted by an international arms dealer out of Madrid. His entry into the U.S.A. was information passed onto Todd Aykroyd, one of their liaisons at Washington's National Security Council who immediately called his boss, Myron Klass. When they later saw that the Professor had moved onto Barbados, and not back to Winnipeg, their interest was piqued. So was the curiosity of C.S.I.S., Ottawa's timid answer to the C.I.A. His movements became an item on the agendas whenever these two agencies got together.
While the Professor was settling into a wonderful job as a librarian in Holetown on Barbados, he couldn't leave well-enough alone. Soon he was spending his evenings cruising through the darker websites for more information about the missiles stolen by Juan Moreno, the Spanish arms dealer. The agencies wondered why. They too were watching Moreno with a great deal of interest.
The lives of these people begin to intersect as Spain enlists the help of its own, nefarious Madrid-based arms dealer, Moreno, originally a native of Lebanon, to support their ambition to retake control of Venezuela's oil reserves, even though they had been kicked out of that country many generations ago. Washington now took a more active interest once their own dominance in the resource industries in the Americas was being put at risk by Moreno, who Klass is supposedly watching, under the auspices of his first European patron.
Suddenly, Barbados, because of its proximity to Venezuela and its many multi-generational family connections, becomes the centre of international maneuvers including Moreno's threat of a kidnapping of a member of the family of the President of Venezuela to satisfy Spain's ambitions.
The Professor sees an opportunity to gain at the expense of these so-called (according to him) sophisticated players with plenty of money. But, like the first time he played with these folks, he was completely unprepared as to what was about to happen to him.
