ISLAMORADA

A third appearance for Jack Novak, an ex-one-man army for the DEA (Ixtapa, 1994, etc.) who's now holed up in a Florida Keys fishing shack recovering from a shoulder injury, an ignominious retreat from Mexico, and a brush-off from a longtime girlfriend. But hold the sympathy: Jack has plenty of money stashed in his Coral Gables house, and very soon he'll have a new bedroom buddy- -20-ish Anita Chavez, the younger daughter of Guatemala's deposed dictator Colonel Oscar Chavez, who died in the crash of a plane not flown by Claude Tessier, his chief pilot and Anita's hated husband. Tessier, jailed on drug-running charges, has been released on bail from a Florida prison and vanished from sight. One night Anita is murdered in her motel room, and Jack later finds a fortune in emeralds and some Swiss bank account numbers she'd hidden in his shack. He knows Tessier is behind the killing, and destroying the actual hit men doesn't slake his thirst for vengeance. Enter Anita's sister Rita, in Florida for the funeral. She lives in Spain with an in-name-only husband, a small army of servants, and a retarded son—the product of rape and incest. True love at last- -following a path from deep in the Everglades to Switzerland to Spain, where a kidnapping ends in a not-unexpected revelation. More than you ever wanted to know about guns, boats, and Florida fish, along with its ritual assortment of double-crosses, acts of violence, and boudoir antics.