Dave Delano didn't spend five years in prison idling away hard time. "I believe in the redistribution of wealth," he told one guard. But redistribution for Dave was strictly personal. His five-year plan aimed to put a million-five into his own pockets.

In the former Soviet Union there are a million scams. Most lucrative is money-laundering. Refitting U.S. yachts to hide dirty dollars and shipping these across the Atlantic on transport ferries destined for Black Sea ports, the mob magically "disappears" its cash into Russian banks. Dave Delano thinks some of that money should be his. It's a simple matter of highjacking on the high seas.

For the Colombian cartel, Europe is a magnet. But landing their coke is another matter. When FBI agent Kate Fury gets a hot tip they are shipping it in a hollowed-out yacht hull via transport ferry, she knows she's onto the biggest collar of her career. Boarding that ferry, she's set to pounce. But she hasn't counted on Dave Delano, who has his own personal agenda. The result is combustion: a fast and very funny romantic caper that will keep you guessing to the end.

Amazon.com Review
Phillip Kerr, a bestselling author in his native U.K., has been called "Michael Crichton's smarter brother" due to his wide-ranging intelligence and technical knowledge. Dave Delano, the protagonist of this lively thriller, is an American who's educated himself in prison--serving a sentence for a manslaughter he didn't commit. Newly fluent in Russian, he's intrigued by the idea of redistributing wealth, particularly the Mafia's. His plan is to hijack a transatlantic transport ferry/yacht being used to smuggle drug money and to divert the dollars into his very own bank in the former Soviet Union. It all seems flawless until he meets another Grand Duke passenger who's looking to score: Kate Fury, a gorgeous FBI agent who's been tracking cocaine from Colombia to Miami to the European playgrounds of the rich and expecting the biggest collar of her career. What happens when they cross paths is the stuff of a funny, violent, and oddly romantic caper. The plot twists fast enough to satisfy even die-hard Elmore Leonard fans and turns on double dealing, false identities, and misunderstood motives, without letting the humor get in the way of the action. --Jane Adams