- Bracken, Matthew.
Castigo Cay.
Orange Park, FL: Steelcutter Publishing, 2011.
ISBN 978-0-9728310-4-8.
-
Dan Kilmer wasn't cut out to be a college man. Disappointing
his father, after high school he enlisted in the Marine Corps,
becoming a sniper who, in multiple tours in the sandbox, had
sent numerous murderous miscreants to their reward. Upon
leaving the service, he found that the skills he had acquired
had little value in the civilian world. After a disastrous
semester trying to adjust to college life, he went to work
for his rich uncle, who had retired and was refurbishing a
sixty foot steel hulled schooner with a dream of cruising the
world and escaping the deteriorating economy and increasing
tyranny of the United States. Fate intervened, and after
his uncle's death Dan found himself owner and skipper of
the now seaworthy craft.
Some time later, Kilmer is cruising the Caribbean with his
Venezuelan girlfriend Cori Vargas and crew members Tran Hung
and Victor Aleman. The schooner Rebel Yell is
hauled out for scraping off barnacles while waiting for a
treasure hunting gig which Kilmer fears may not come off,
leaving him desperately short of funds. Cori desperately
wants to get to Miami, where she believes she can turn her looks
and charm into a broadcast career. Impatient, she jumps
ship and departs on the mega-yacht Topaz, owned
by shadowy green energy crony capitalist Richard Prechter.
After her departure, another yatero
informs Dan that Prechter has a dark reputation and that there
are rumours of other women who boarded his yacht disappearing
under suspicious circumstances. Kilmer made a solemn promise
to Cori's father that he would protect her, and he takes his
promises very seriously, so he undertakes to track Prechter to
a decadent and totalitarian Florida, and then pursue him to
Castigo Cay in the Bahamas where a horrible fate awaits Cori.
Kilmer, captured in a desperate rescue attempt, has little
other than his wits to confront Prechter and his armed
crew as time runs out for Cori and another woman abducted by
Prechter.
While set in a future in which the United States has continued
to spiral down into a third world stratified authoritarian
state, this is not a “big picture” tale like
the author's Enemies trilogy
(1, 2, 3). Instead,
it is a story related in close-up, told in the first person,
by an honourable and resourceful protagonist with few
material resources pitted against the kind of depraved sociopath
who flourishes as states devolve into looting and enslavement
of their people.
This is a thriller that works, and the description of the
culture shock that awaits one who left the U.S. when it
was still semi-free and returns, even covertly, today
will resonate with those who got out while they could.
Extended
excerpts
of this and the author's other novels are available online at the
author's Web site.
February 2014 