Mark Hawkins, former park ranger and expert tracker, is out of his element, working onboard the Magellan, a research vessel studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But his work is interrupted when, surrounded by thirty miles of refuse, the ship and its high-tech systems are plagued by a series of strange malfunctions and the crew is battered by a raging storm. When the storm fades and the sun rises, the beaten crew awakens to find themselves anchored in the protective cove of a tropical island . . . and no one knows how they got there. Even worse, the ship has been sabotaged, two crewmen are dead, and a third is missing. Hawkins spots signs of the missing man onshore and leads a small team to bring him back. But they quickly discover evidence of a brutal history left behind by the island's former occupants: Unit 731, Japan's ruthless World War II human experimentation program. Mass graves and military fortifications dot the island, along with a decades-old laboratory housing the remains of hideous experiments. As more crew members start to disappear, Hawkins realizes that they are not alone. In fact, he suspects they were brought "Što this strange and horrible island. The crew is taken one by one, and while Hawkins fights to save his friends, he learns the horrible truths: Island 731 was never decommissioned and the person taking his crewmates may not be a person at all - not anymore.
What's a nice, proper dame like Joan Parker doing in a place like Dick Moonlight's office? The scar running down her face - from the business end of an axe - has something to do with it. Shortly after the attack that killed her husband and left her for dead, she pointed the finger at her son Christopher, who now sits in jail. But the woman insists the police have it all wrong - Christopher didn't do it - and she just needs the private eye to prove it. Moonlight knows mothers will say anything to protect their kids. He also knows how the police can take a mistake and run with it. Having been nearly dead a time or two himself makes Moonlight a little more empathetic. He takes the case, and soon the clues lead him toward something more sinister than he's ever seen before.
Private Investigator Dick Moonlight returns to chase down a cop gone bad in the next installment of author Vincent Zandri's clever and cunning Moonlight series. Moonlight has hit some turbulence. Sure, his bar burned to the ground; his significant other, Lola, left him for another man; the private eye business is slow; and his evenings are now spent with his new pal, Jack Daniels. But this is real turbulence - in a plane, going down fast, and he's waking up handcuffed to an FBI agent. How he got there is a little fuzzy, thanks to the sliver of a .22 caliber hollow-point bullet lodged in his brain. Once on the ground, and after a few bumps and bruises, things become clearer and more dangerous. Thinking he's been brought to FBI headquarters for drunk-dialing the IRS, Moonlight learns that he's got some unfinished business: his last case, which had him up against Russian mobsters in search of a zip drive loaded with government secrets, isn't exactly closed. The cop who was supposed to deliver the goods to the FBI went rogue, bringing along a crooked agent and Moonlight's ex, and now he's out to sell the hardware to the highest bidder. The FBI wants Moonlight's help in tracking down the trio - all the way to Florence, Italy - and wooing Lola into handing over the zip drive. He's just going to have to outwit, outrun, and outshoot the Russian thugs who have their own big plans for the zip drive, and for Moonlight.
Dick Moonlight is dead for real this time. Thanks to a trio of Obama-masked thugs in a dark downtown Albany alley, he's purchased a one-way ticket to the Pearly Gates - that is, until he feels his floating spirit painfully pulled back into his bruised but breathing body. And that's when the real trouble starts. A private detective with a short-term memory problem due to a wayward self-inflicted slug, Moonlight knows he's still in danger. Now he just needs to know why. And he's got plenty of enemies to keep him guessing - the Albany police, the local mob, even the latest love of his life, Lola, can't be trusted. Only his Vietnam-vet best friend, Georgie, is on the level. But it seems the goons who tried to take him out have bigger fish to fry - chiefly Moonlight's latest client, Peter Czech, a handicapped nuclear engineer with a mysterious Russian heritage. Czech had something - a box - the gang believes is now in Moonlight's possession, and they're willing to get it any deadly way they can. Problem is, Moonlight doesn't recall Czech giving him any box - of course, that doesn't mean he doesn't have it. He just better figure out where it is before he winds up dead for the last time. The Cold War is heating up once again in Vincent Zandri's latest thriller. Moonlight Rises is a fast-paced, whip-smart tale of a guy who can't always remember getting into trouble - and can't seem to stay out of it.
