"After being away from his home in the Florida Keys for nine months, Jesse McDermitt has returned to find his tiny island compound just north of Big Pine Key in disarray. Being away for so long has taken its toll. Not just on Jesse and his family, but also their island.
The part-time caretaker Jesse hired has disappeared without a trace, and many of the systems that made life easier on the island for Jesse and his family needed attention. After weeks of hard work, things are finally back in order, and Jesse receives a cryptic phone call from an associate in Key West, a yacht broker, asking him to come down island and have a look at something he's discovered.
The part-time caretaker turns up dead in a hotel room in Miami and the body count begins to mount. So Jesse brings in the big guns, both figuratively and literally, as their island is under attack. But what Dean Murphy uncovered was just the tip of the iceberg.
When Jesse and his cohorts become involved, it will take every bit of their accumulated experience, cunning, and warrior attitude to cut off the head of the snake and restore order to the rest of the Florida Keys."
"After undergoing many weeks of training during the harsh winter months in the frozen north, Jesse McDermitt and Rusty Thurman are ready for some time off, their last leave period in their first year in the Marine Corps.
Only this time, it’s not palm trees and sunny tropical beaches they’ll be unwinding at, but diving in the frigid and treacherous coastal waters off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the famed Graveyard of the Atlantic, thought to hold great wealth in the cold embrace of her murky depths.
The perilous banks, with their constantly shifting cuts, both far offshore, and in Pamlico Sound, have been the stronghold of piracy for centuries and thousands of ships lay in their watery graves there. Modern pirates don’t plunder merchant vessels for gold, sugar, and silks, but instead preyed on all sorts of boaters around the Sound, even drug traffickers.
When Jesse and Rusty, along with another Marine, run up against the ocean thieves, an unlikely partner joins in the fight to tip the odds.
The OBX has a history as deep and dark as the ocean that surrounds it. And all too often, man-made storms cause just as much havoc as the hurricanes which have lashed her shores."
"Jesse McDermitt has done it. He has escaped the ugliness so pervasive in modern society, and along with his family and a few close friends, they have set out aboard a boat he designed himself for living long periods totally off the grid.
The first couple of months are peaceful, uneventful, and by today's standards, quite boring. But the crew of Taranis have the sun, sea, and quiet coves to explore, where there aren't even any footprints in the sand.
Until they reach their destination.
The island of Dominica, in the middle of the Leeward Islands, rises straight up out of the Caribbean, with volcanic peaks shrouded in mist from the many steam vents and Boiling Lake itself.
Little does McDermitt know, but the island is also a staging area for drugs and arms coming up out of South America. When a group of men on a luxury cruising yacht reveal clues as to who they really are, Jesse handles things in his trademark fashion... murder and mayhem in paradise."
"It’s been three months since Jesse McDermitt had any time off to go back home to Florida. When two surprise openings on the leave roster open up, he and his friend Rusty Thurman jump on it, and head back to the Keys for some scuba diving.
The husband of a local reporter’s friend has nearly been killed. Not once, but four times in less than a month. The reporter is Jesse’s new girlfriend and they become curious. How does a man survive four attempts on his life?
Meanwhile, the man Jesse helped put away is doing time in Florida State Prison, hundreds of miles to the north. But Bear Bering isn’t completely cutoff. His cousin, Chuck, is still working the tourist crowds in Key West and has learned that Jesse and Rusty are back in town.
Suddenly, Jesse and his friends are in danger, and once again they are forced to leave. A biker gang, under Chuck Bering’s direction, comes after Jesse and his friends. The leader, a mountain of a man named Sideshift, served time with Bear and both he and chuck want to see Jesse and anyone around him crushed."
"Jesse McDermitt is back, just as he promised. This time, he is thrust into the heart of the Florida Panhandle's Tate's Hell State Forest, where the tranquil surroundings belie a dangerous secret—a network of clandestine meth labs hidden against the backdrop of the Forgotten Coast’s natural beauty.
Jesse, a retired Marine turned charter boat captain, has brought his family to Apalachicola “for the oysters.” But being who he is, the leisurely cruise soon spins into a gripping quest to unravel the truth behind the illicit operations threatening the region.
As rumors swirl around the waterfront, Jesse is propelled into a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, navigating through a maze of secrets and deception to expose the sinister forces at play.
With his trademark blend of resourcefulness and determination, Jesse uncovers a web of intrigue that threatens to tear apart the fabric of the tight-knit community."
"When a group of strangers purchase land on Tortola and Norman Island to set up a commune, the locals simply write them off as an odd sort - until one of their bloated bodies washes up on the shore of a nearby resort island.
As luck would have it, Jesse McDermitt is visiting a friend on Norman Island after tracking a terrorist submarine from the Windward Islands. The sub was destroyed by locals on the Dutch island of Saba, so Jesse had nothing much else to do. What he wasn’t looking for was a murderous cult at the center of a drug manufacturing and distribution ring.
If a person didn’t succumb to the rules of this cult, they might end up riding the chum sluice. If they did, they might meet Jesse."
"In the backcountry of the Florida Keys, you can see and hear trouble coming for miles in any direction. That is, if you're paying attention.
Jesse McDermitt lives in the backcountry and very little happens near him that he's not fully aware of. During a quiet moment, he watches a slow-moving shrimp trawler as it serenely cruises by, barely visible on the horizon at the edge of the three-mile limit.
The tranquility of the moment is shattered when the trawler is suddenly demolished in an enormous explosion. What caused the explosion? And why was a woman from Jesse's past on board?
To find the answers to these questions and more, Jesse and friends will work from Miami to Key West, then across the water to Fort Myers. When the bad guys hit too close to home, Jesse retaliates. Furiously."
"Miles from the laid-back lifestyle of No Name Key, and just shy of the raucous nightlife of Miami and South Beach, lies Coconut Grove, a tropical oasis with a distinct Bohemian flair. Lately, a seedy underside has emerged along the Grove's waterfront, preying on adventurous young women.
Somewhere amid all the glitz and glamour, hides a thief who stole a fortune in Aztec emeralds. Or did he? Jesse McDermitt must first determine if the victim herself is a thief. The trail of clues leads him to evidence that the thief may be involved in a string of more heinous crimes.
Jesse and Chyrel enlist the help of the recently returned Charity, and the trio go 'undercover' at a floating swinger's party headed for the Bahamas, which may well be a front for torture and murder.
When a sudden violent storm strikes Stiltsville, Jesse finds himself alone on the ocean, trying to recover the treasure and put a murderer behind bars - but first he must win the battle with Mother Nature."
"In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, Jesse McDermitt has rebuilt his island in the Content Keys far better than it was before the storm. The task was enormous, but so was his need to make things better.
Unbeknownst to Jesse, an environmentally conscious woman from his past has stumbled onto a drug manufacturing cartel in Virginia while working on a pollution mitigation problem. The cartel responds by sending someone to kill people Jesse cares for. A contract killer stalks the woman all the way to Miami, leaving bodies in his wake.
With the help of an old flame in the FBI, Jesse goes to the snow-covered Appalachians to get to the root of the trouble: an unscrupulous prosecutor and dirty sheriff, who are producing LSD on an unbelievable scale.
Is Jesse out of his element this time? Can he protect the people he cares for most? It’s a race against time and Mother Nature to find a killer stalking the quiet neighborhoods of Coconut Grove."
"Where Jerry Snyder goes, trouble follows. Someone tried to kill him and his bride on their honeymoon in the Virgin Islands. And moving there permanently is proving to be anything but tranquil.
First, he’s working for the secretive Armstrong Organization - a group dedicated to hunting terrorists, drug smugglers, and the nastiest criminals since Blackbeard.
Second, his partner is DJ Martin, a one-legged Airborne vet, who has the temperament of a croc with a toothache. DJ has never met a nose he couldn’t break, and he’s tested plenty of them.
When a body washes ashore at an island resort in Culebra, a family desperate for help turns to Jerry and DJ. Sailing the Caribbean looking for answers, their course proves deadlier than either man bargained for. And when Jerry’s past dealings appear on the horizon, the two men have to find common ground to overcome a cunning, powerful enemy with a desire more dangerous than murder."
"After returning home to the Florida Keys, Jesse moves on to Fort Myers, his hometown on the Southwest Florida coast. There is much work to be done, and Jesse is no stranger to hard work.
On a kayak outing with friends, Jesse's daughter finds and rescues a manatee suffering from respiratory problems. The red tide has returned, and fish are dying by the thousands, along with dolphins, manatees, and sea birds.
The algal bloom is a naturally occurring phenomenon, but this time it's much worse. Theories abound; it's something left over from the previous spring's coronavirus outbreak, it's caused by pollution, someone is intentionally creating a super-algae....
But there's something far more sinister at work, and it's up to Jesse to find out what it is and put a stop to it."
"Paradise isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Few people know this as well as Jesse McDermitt, retired Marine and former government operative.
In the aftermath of an intense mission in coastal Mexico, Jesse wants nothing more than to get back to his boat; to just sail away and forget all about the firefight and his warrior past.
The Caribbean sun is warm, the azure water inviting, he has the woman of his dreams at his side, and everything seems to be smooth sailing.
Until a severed leg is found tangled in a line securing Jesse’s dinghy to his 61-foot sailing yacht, Salty Dog. The former owner of the appendage turns out to be the eighth victim of a lunatic who kills for money and a former Russian smuggler who won’t pass up a chance for one more big score.
Jesse is forced to don the warrior’s mask once again. This time to catch a ghoulish killer who is stalking the villages and jungles outside Belize City."
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