WHITE CARGO

by Stuart Woods ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1988

The coolest commercial calculation yet from best-selling Woods (Chiefs; Deep Lie; Under the Lake; etc.) as he crafts a lightweight but immensely entertaining thriller about a dad scouring Colombia for his teen-age daughter and the cocaine-lord who's taken her as his sex slave. Subtlety takes a back seat to emotion-charged action here, beginning with the violence that spins the plot into orbit: off the Colombian coast, pirates raid the yacht of wealthy inventor Wendell ""Cat"" Catledge, shotgunning him; he awakens to see the savaged bodies of wife Katie and daughter Jinx going down with his sinking ship. It's only months later, after a bitter encounter with his disinherited drug-dealing son, that hope creeps back into Cat's heart via a late-night phone call and a faint voice crying ""Daddy""--Jinx lives! With CIA help, Cat links up with a charming but rough-hewn ex-drug smuggler, Bluey Holland; packing guns and two million of Cat's fortune, the pair fly secretly into Colombia. There, bribing and stealing leads, they pick up the trail of the shadowy ""Anaconda,"" Colombia's top drug-baron--and one whose sybaritic tastes include a harem of young Anglo girls. Bluey dies of a mugging, but Woods retains his novel's buddy-symmetry by having Cat soon pick up a new partner: luscious journalist Meg Greville, who's so eager for a story that she'll follow the inventor anywhere--even into bed. The two wind up in the Anaconda's cocaine factory-fortress deep in the jungle, where Cat, posing as a drug investor, finds not only Jinx--drugged, numb--but his son as well. Enraged, ruthless, Cat plays cat to the Anaconda's mouse, killing in cold and in hot blood to free his daughter and to drink deep of vengeance. A bit slow around the middle, where travelogue vies with suspense; elsewhere, grade-A escapist fare featuring richly colorful characters, a turbo-plot that fuels on Middle-American nightmares, and well-timed dollops of sex and violence. Woods pushes bright red buttons here, but who cares? The alarms they set off make for grand fun.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1988

ISBN: 0061711640

Page Count: -

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1988

Categories: FICTION