CRACKDOWN

A professional yachtsman and his pretty first mate sail into drug-infested waters and do fierce battle with the meanest cocaine merchants in the Bahamas. Twentieth-century swashbuckling by the author of the Sharpe series (Sharpe's Revenge, etc.). The yachtsman's father is Britain's greatest actor, but Nicholas Breakspeare, strongly disapproving of his father's offstage naughtiness and the general phoniness-of-it-all, had gone in for a life of adventure, progressing from Royal Marine to bluewater yachtsman. Since he won't take a penny from his rakehell father, Nick has to hire himself out to the likes of the slimy American Senator Crowninshield, who thinks a hearty month or so at sea would clear up his son's and daughter's rather serious cocaine addictions. Nick, who has just had a very nasty run-in with the creepy Bahamian police after reporting his discovery of a bullet-punctured and empty sailboat, would rather have nothing to do with anything remotely connected to drugs—but the Senator is offering an indecent amount of money, and Nick's villainous boss insists he take the charter. All hell breaks loose with the arrival of the loathsome, coke-crazed Rickie Crowninshield and his weepy Sister. Rickie has absolutely no intention of giving up his nose candy—and goes to great and violent lengths to continue snorting without interruption, involving Nick in open warfare with Rickie's ruthless drug-lord connection. Action-packed, well-paced, and dripping with gore but rather cartoonish. A few nice sailing scenes.