Caliban Rising

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Do you like mystery?
Adventure?
Pages you can't stop turning?

Then fly down to Caliban Island, with Willie Deane. He's going in undercover, although he doesn't want to. He's quit this work--too many bullet wounds. But his former handler calls in a chit. He tells Willie: "It'll be like a Caribbean vacation."

No it won't.

Because the island's new owner--a Silicon-Valley whiz-kid--immediately blacked it out, raising intelligence agency eyebrows. So they sent in an agent. He never came back. Now it's Willie's turn.

Willie finds a compound patrolled by Glock-wielding mercenaries. They don't like him. He finds a research facility, the Sugar Cube, where weird robots wander...and workers disappear. One by one, they're thrown from a Black Hawk helicopter. Or fed to the island's feral Bengal tiger, "William Blake."

Managing the island is a woman of obscure background, her hair prematurely white. She's an expert at what Willie calls "weaponized flirting." Is she why Willie is next on the to-be-killed list?

He has allies. An affable Bronx-raised technician, who looks like a Fifties Italian crooner. A Croatian robotics engineer, a self-proclaimed Wiccan, who dyes her hair green. Neither is a fighter.

Willie is.

He has no weapons, though. Only his wits. His handler once said: "Willie's smarter than Satan." Is he savvy enough to save lives, including his own?

Maybe. But this time his most formidable enemy has stratospheric intelligence. And it isn't even alive. In the Sugar Cube, something is about to be born that shouldn't be.

Treat yourself to this story--it'll make you think.