Ken Douglas and Jack Stewart are two sailing writers, well Ken has moved to the land now, who met in the Caribbean. They have a lot in common, their love of the sea, their fondness for Venezuelan rum and their fear of dentists. All this and storytellers too.

Wellington, New Zealand: Gayle Sterling is vacationing with her daughter Dylan when they’re in an accident with a drunk driver. They are quickly taken to hospital, Gayle with a fractured femur and all the bones in her right foot broken, Dylan with a punctured lung. Just before surgery, her doctor assures Gayle that both she and her daughter are going to be fine.

Long Beach, California: Psychiatrist Sanford (Sandy) Sterling is called away from a charity function to the site of the new Sterling Hotel. Gina Sealy, one of his patients is out on a fifteenth floor balcony of the newest hotel in the family hotel group, threatening to jump. She’d called the media, because she’s in love with Sandy and she thinks he doesn’t want her. Newsman Nick Nesbitt is on the ground with a news van, Gina is wired for sound and Sandy has to talk her out of jumping with the whole world listening in.

Newport Beach, California. Haley Harrison and Taylor Sterling are lounging around by the Sterling’s pool when all of a sudden Taylor feels a sharp pain in her chest. “Dylan,” she cries. She knows immediately her twin is in pain. She tries to get a hold of her father, Senator Stacy Sterling, who is running for the Presidency of the United States, but his cell phone is off. She calls his administrative aid in Washington and has him book tickets for herself and Haley on the next flight from LA to Auckland.

San Francisco, California: While his wife and daughter are in surgery in New Zealand, while his younger brother is trying to keep a desperate girl from jumping in Long Beach, and while his other daughter and her best friend are frantically worrying about Gayle and Dylan, Presidential Candidate Stacy Sterling is in the penthouse sweet of the San Francisco Sterling, making love to a teenage prostitute.

Wellington, New Zealand: Sandy, Taylor and Haley arrive in New Zealand just in time for Haley and Taylor to say goodbye to Dylan before she dies. The tragedy draws Haley and Taylor close, they become lovers and that alone would be enough to shake Stacy’s campaign to it’s roots, but Dylan kept a journal on her laptop that falls into the hands of Nick Nesbitt, who desperately wants a story that will put him on the map. Plus there is that little matter of the little girls the candidate likes to sleep with.

From the Writers
I didn't know we had this kind of story in us, perhaps we wouldn’t have, if not for two gorgeous and generous ladies who prefer to remain anonymous. They are the real Haley and Taylor. They sailed away and are living their dream and to them we own an enormous debt. If you’ve a mind to read a good and true story, then give Tangerine Dream a chance. I think you might enjoy it. —Jack Stewart

When Jack and I started this book, we started a woman in trouble thriller. We intended lots of action as our heroines, inexperienced sailors Haley and Taylor were first threatened by, then chased by some really bad, ugly, lowlife pirate guys from island to island in the South Pacific. But somehow, I don’t know how, we got sidetracked. We wanted a love interest and thought we had it with Gayle and Sandy, but the book rapidly turned into Haley and Taylor’s story and we thought, why can’t they fall in love with each other. A risky deal for us, because neither one of us has any experience along those lines. Fortunately, we met two wonderful women who were sailing around the world together. We got to talking, they read our manuscript, then they put us right and now we have a book that we are proud of. - Ken Douglas

Trinidad, West Indies: Frank Shannon, who works for Skidmore Oil, is enjoying himself, before he has to set up the grill for his annual Boxing Day Barbecue for wealthy Trinidadians and Cruising American Yachtsmen at the Five Islands, a small Island group about a mile off the eastern coast of Trinidad in the Gulf of Paria. He’s swimming, snorkeling, having a good time. Ashore his wife Beth is lazing the day away, watching her husband frolic. Then Frank’s daughter, Noelle by his first marriage, screams out that she’s found a dead body. Beth and Frank hurry to investigate, when Frank sees the dead woman he collapses with a heart attack.

Los Angeles, California: The two woman are met by a pair of police officers at the airport when they bring the body back for burial. The news is bad, Frank’s ex-wife, Noelle’s mother, along with Noelle’s aunt and her husband Mark Skidmore, who also happened to be Frank’s boss, have all been murdered.

Homicide Detective Billy Wolfe offers the woman the use of his beachside apartment in Long Beach, telling them it’s a friend’s place. He has been on extended leave for a year because of the death of his wife and child and this is his first case back on the job, so he wants to keep the women under his thumb. Besides, he thinks Frank Shannon dying of a heart attack three thousand miles away at the same time as his boss and ex-wife are being murdered in California isn’t just a coincidence.

Wolfe questions Beth Shannon over lunch and finds out she owns a condo in Huntington Beach, which Frank used when he was in the States on business for Skidmore Oil. Wolfe and his partner go there and interrupt someone searching the place. A security guard is killed, Wolfe’s partner is shot and Wolfe is smacked on the head with the barrel of a gun. He wakes in the hospital only to find Beth has flown the coup. She’s gone back to Trinidad. But Wolfe is a tenacious cop with resources of his own, so using his own money, he buys a ticket and follows.

Trinidad, West Indies: Beth apologizes for leaving California so suddenly, but she has nothing to contribute to Wolfe’s investigation and her home is on board her boat “Shogun”. Wolfe understands and on a dark and rainy New Year’s Eve they shed their inhibitions and make love in a swimming pool.

But Beth flees Trinidad in her sailboat with her daughter the next day and Wolfe wonders why. He finds out Corbeau Yacht Services was about to seize Beth’s sailboat, claiming Frank had owed them money. Wolfe also learns the shipyard’s sent a couple unsavory characters after her in their own boat to find and bring her back. Against his better judgment, Wolfe teams with a drug smuggler, who agrees to aid him in his quest to save the damsels in distress.

Thus begins a hunt by sailboat that covers the length and breath of the Caribbean, during which Wolfe discovers that both Corbeau (Caribbean slang for vulture) Yacht Services and Skidmore Oil are run by the Russian Mafia and are fronts for smuggling conflict diamonds into the United States. Conflict diamonds are mined by children in West African Nations who are little more than slaves of brutal dictators, who trade the diamonds for money and drugs, the money for themselves, the drugs for their child armies to keep them in power.

Frank Skidmore had been skimming diamonds for years, hiding them on “Shogun”. Beth and Noelle don’t know this, the Russian Mafia does. They want their diamonds back and they don’t care who they have to kill to get them.

A note about DIAMOND SKY and HURRICANE

Most of the writing DIAMOND SKY took place while I was anchored out at the Five Islands group, about four miles off the western coast of Trinidad in the Gulf of Paria. Every morning I would dingy over to "Great White Wonder", Ken and Vesta's great race boat and we'd work, argue, work and sometimes start drinking the rum and cokes Vesta made way before sundown.

I really wanted a Hurricane in the book, Ken did not, he wanted to incorporate some of the characters from his book DEAD RINGER and I didn't like that idea so much. My solution, write the story my way. So there are a heck of a lot of similarities between HURRICANE and DIAMOND SKY, some of the chapters are almost identical. But back then we didn't care, as we never, ever thought what we were writing would ever get published.

However, time moves and both books are out now. We sort of forgot about the problem, but a couple of reviewers picked up on it and so have a few readers. So I thought it a good idea to mention it here. There are many differences between these two books, but there are many similarities as well. I hope you enjoy them both.

Best regards,

Jack Stewart

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