Swimming to Catalina
Page 31
“This slickly entertaining suspenser displays Woods at the top of his game with no signs of flagging…. The narrative rockets toward an abrupt but absolutely stunning denouement. Using all his skills here, and subtly reminiscent of the waggish P.G. Wodehouse, Woods delivers a marvelously sophisticated, thoroughly modern, old-fashioned read.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The devious plot…deftly skewering society types, would be enough to hook most of us, but veteran thriller writer Woods…shrewdly stacks the deck further by bringing back Barrington, the immensely likable star of…New York Dead. The result makes for a lost weekend’s worth of dirty fun—the kind you would want your friends to find out about.”
—People
Dead in the Water
A beautiful young woman sails a large yacht into the harbor of the lovely Caribbean island nation of St. Marks.
Alone.
But she had departed from the other side of the Atlantic in the company of her husband, a well-known writer. His absence places Allison Manning under the intense scrutiny of St. Marks’s considerable Minister of Justice, Sir Winston Sutherland—and, therefore, under the protection of the otherwise vacationing Stone Barrington.
Sir Winston’s motives are unclear but his methods bear little resemblance to the judicial system ex-cop attorney Stone is accustomed to navigating—and Stone finds himself inextricably caught in a swirling storm of island madness and murder, made worse by a hurricane of sensational press coverage.
“One of his best…Woods is a pro and this goes by like a summer breeze, with just enough heat to make you sweat.”
—Detroit News
“Fast paced…Thoroughly entertaining.”
—Publishers Weekly
Swimming to Catalina
Stone Barrington had thought he’d heard the last of Arrington Carter after she’d left him to get engaged to Vance Calder, Hollywood’s hottest star. The last thing Stone expected was a desperate call from Calder.
Arrington has vanished, and her new fiancé wants Stone to come to L.A. and find her.
The assignment turns out to be the most dangerous and treacherous of Stone’s career. Powerful people are gunning for him. Where is Arrington? Why did she disappear? And does Vance Calder really want her back?
People magazine’s “Page Turner of the Week”
“A heck of a plot, intrigue, and cover-up between the first page and the last.”
—San Antonio Express News
Worst Fears Realized
It is the scenario that every ex-policeman dreads—all around him people are dying, and Stone Barrington suspects the killer may be someone he’d put in prison years before. Stone hooks up with his ex-partner from the NYPD, Dino Bacchetti, now the head of detectives in the 19th Precinct, and the two men must pool their resources to protect those close to them.
Stone’s former love, Arrington, now married to movie star Vance Calder, is back, too, and nose-to-nose with the new woman in Stone’s life—who has a Mafia bloodline and who may be as dangerous as she is beautiful.
From a premier table at Elaine’s to dark back alleys where lurk Armani-clad mobsters with the latest lethal accessories, Stone launches a life-and-death hunt that will test him as no case has ever done before.
“Satisfying to the last dirty deed…This seductive novel will have readers twitching with suspense.”
—Library Journal
“Excellent…A fun read for fans of undercover agents who get plenty of action under the covers.”
—USA Today
More Stone Barrington and Stuart Woods coming from PerfectBound…
The five Stone Barrington novels described above (there are, to date, nine, also including L.A. Dead; Cold Paradise; The Short Forever) are available from PerfectBound e-books as of April 2003. Please visit www.perfectbound.com for details of and to purchase these five titles and other Stuart Woods e-books titles. And get all the latest news on Stuart Woods at www.stuartwoods.com.
And new in hardcover from Stuart Woods…
Dirty Work
Back in New York City after the London adventures of The Short Forever, cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington is approached by a colleague at the firm of Woodman & Weld seeking help with a celebrity divorce case.
Heiress Elena Marks needs proof of her lay about husband’s infidelity before she can begin divorce proceedings. When the undercover work Stone sets up turns dirty—and catastrophic—leaving the errant husband dead and the mystery woman gone without a trace, Stone must clear his own good name and find a killer hiding among the glitterati of New York’s high society.
Carpenter—the beautiful British intelligence agent first encountered in The Short Forever—arrives in New York to begin an investigation of her own; Stone suspects that her case is strangely connected to the dead husband. And he and Dino, his former NYPD partner, are set to face the most bizarre and challenging assignment of their very colorful careers.
About the Author
Stuart Woods was born in Manchester, Georgia; graduated from the University of Georgia; and served in the Air National Guard. A professional sailor, Mr. Woods participated in the Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR) in 1976 and the catastrophic Fastnet Race in 1979, in which fifteen competitors died.
W.W. Norton published Woods’s first novel, Chiefs, in 1981. It won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America that year and was made into a six-hour television drama starring Charlton Heston.
Mr. Woods, who has written twenty-six novels—including nine featuring Stone Barrington—currently resides in Florida, New York City, and Maine.
Please visit www.stuartwoods.com.
Praise for Stuart Woods and
SWIMMINNG TO CATALINA
“This enjoyable, star-dusted plunge into Hollywood’s dark side agreeably melds ’90s glitz with classic noir.”
—People magazine
“A fast-paced thriller…. Swimming to Catalina is Woods’s 17th novel, and his experience is evident in a tight storyline that never loses focus while barreling to an exciting finale…. Woods…keeps readers interested.”
—Rocky Mountain News
“Outstanding…. After nearly two dozen books, Woods can still surprise readers, not only with clever plots and characters, but also with his knowledge of everything from aeronautics to yachtsmanship.”
—Booklist
“His best book since Santa Fe Rules.”
—Boston Globe
“Woods is in the entertainment business…and he’s good at it.”
—Winston-Salem Journal
DEAD IN THE WATER
“A man lost at sea, a small airplane crash, some impassioned sexual antics, and a tropical island…. One of [his] best…. Woods is a pro and this goes by like a summer breeze, with just enough heat to make you sweat.”
—Detroit News
“Fast-paced, filled with enough humor, sex and clever surprises all the way to the last page to make it thoroughly entertaining amusement.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Trying to make this neat tale last more than one sitting would be like staying up all night nursing a Godiva truffle.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
DIRT
“Blackmail, murder, suspense, love—what else could you want in a book?”
—Cosmopolitan
“This slickly entertaining suspenser displays Woods at the top of his game…. Woods delivers a marvelously sophisticated, thoroughly modern, old-fashioned read.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“There is something delightfully nasty about the way Stuart Woods settles every account in his crime capers. Even more delightful is the juggling act that lasts almost to the last page, when the payoffs fall like autumn leaves.”
—New York Daily News
CHOKE
“Woods know how to keep the narrative pace in overdrive…. An entertaining page-turner.”
—New York Times
Book Review
“A real page-turner with surprises along the way.”
—Boston Globe
IMPERFECT STRANGERS
“Woods does show a reader a good time.”
—Washington Post Book World
“Engages the reader’s imagination in an unconventional way. Compels us to place the novel’s events on the silver screen in the shadow of a latter-day Hitchcock, and somehow, it works.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
HEAT
“High melodrama and unexpected twists make this teflon-coated blockbuster business as usual in Woods’s practiced hands.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A high-concept action thriller.”
—Kirkus Reviews
DEAD EYES
“Keeps you reading.”
—Cosmopolitan
Books by Stuart Woods
Stone Barrington Novels
New York Dead
Dirt
Dead in the Water
Swimming to Catalina
Worst Fears Realized
L.A. Dead
Cold Paradise
The Short Forever
Dirty Work
Holly Barker
Orchid Beach
Orchid Blues
Blood Orchid
Will Lee
Run Before the Wind
Grass Roots
The Run
Standalone Titles
Chiefs
Deep Lie
Under the Lake
White Cargo
Palindrome
Santa Fe Rules
L.A. Times
Dead Eyes
Heat
Imperfect Strangers
Choke
Nonfiction
Blue Water, Green Skipper
A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and England
Credits
Cover design and illustraction by John Lewis
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
SWIMMING TO CATALINA. Copyright © 1998 by Stuart Woods. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of PerfectBound™.
“We Are Very Different People”: Stuart Woods on Stone Barrington. This interview originally appeared in The Internet Writing Journal (R), http://www.writerswrite.com. Copyright © 1997–2003 by Writers Write, Inc. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
PerfectBound™ and the PerfectBound™ logo are trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Microsoft Reader April 2003 ISBN 0-06-057481-X
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1998 by HarperCollins Publishers.
First HarperPaperbacks printing: December 1998
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