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Summary
Summary
The #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Stone Barrington series delivers a riveting novel of one man's desperate war against the richest and most ruthless drug cartel in the world.
Tech millionaire Wendell "Cat" Catledge has taken two years off to sail around the world with his wife and eighteen-year-old daughter. And he's never been happier--until an impromptu stop for repairs and supplies in Santa Marta, Colombia, turns into a disaster. His wife and daughter are sent to a watery grave, but Cat--though shot--survives...
Now as Cat struggles to put the pieces of his life back together, one phone call will change everything--and send him back to Colombia on a vengeance-fueled journey through its deadly drug towns. One faint voice in the night that says..."Daddy."
Author Notes
Stuart Woods was born in Manchester, Georgia on January 9, 1938. He received a B. A. in sociology from the University of Georgia in 1959. He worked in the advertising business and eventually wrote two non-fiction books entitled Blue Water, Green Skipper and A Romantic's Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland. His first novel, Chiefs, was published in 1981. It won an Edgar Award and was made into a TV miniseries starring Charlton Heston. His other works include the Stone Barrington series, the Holly Barker series, the Will Lee series, the Ed Eagle series, the Rick Barron series and the Teddy Fay series. He won France's Prix de Literature Policiere for Imperfect Strangers. His autobiography, An Extravagant Life, was published in June 2022. Stuart Woods died on July 22, 2022, at his home in Lichfield, Connecticut. He was 84.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Despite Woods's on-site research in Colombia, this suspense tale of cocaine trafficking and kidnapping only skims the surface of the seamy drug world it purports to investigate. Wendell (``Cat'') Catledge, a self-made electronics millionaire, is yachting off the South American coast with his family when a bloody act of piracy snatches away his ``heart-stoppingly beautiful'' teenage daughter Jinx and wife Katie. They are presumed dead, but weeks later Cat gets a brief phone call and recognizes Jinx's voice. His quest for his daughter, who is now a zombie enslaved by ``the Anaconda,'' a Colombian drug baron, involves Cat with assorted CIA and narc types and with Meg Greville, a freelance TV journalist who may be KGB. Woods (Deep Lie, Chiefs) serves up a slam-bang rescue as a fitting finale, but the suspense overall is so-so and the Latinos are either faceless or stereotypically sneaky. This one reads like a lukewarm episode of Miami Vice. (August) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
The coolest commercial calculation yet from best-selling Woods (Chiefs; Deep Lie; Under the Lake; etc.) as he crafts a lightweight but immensely entertaining thriller about a dad scouring Colombia for his teen-age daughter and the cocaine-lord who's taken her as his sex slave. Subtlety takes a back seat to emotion-charged action here, beginning with the violence that spins the plot into orbit: off the Colombian coast, pirates raid the yacht of wealthy inventor Wendell ""Cat"" Catledge, shotgunning him; he awakens to see the savaged bodies of wife Katie and daughter Jinx going down with his sinking ship. It's only months later, after a bitter encounter with his disinherited drug-dealing son, that hope creeps back into Cat's heart via a late-night phone call and a faint voice crying ""Daddy""--Jinx lives! With CIA help, Cat links up with a charming but rough-hewn ex-drug smuggler, Bluey Holland; packing guns and two million of Cat's fortune, the pair fly secretly into Colombia. There, bribing and stealing leads, they pick up the trail of the shadowy ""Anaconda,"" Colombia's top drug-baron--and one whose sybaritic tastes include a harem of young Anglo girls. Bluey dies of a mugging, but Woods retains his novel's buddy-symmetry by having Cat soon pick up a new partner: luscious journalist Meg Greville, who's so eager for a story that she'll follow the inventor anywhere--even into bed. The two wind up in the Anaconda's cocaine factory-fortress deep in the jungle, where Cat, posing as a drug investor, finds not only Jinx--drugged, numb--but his son as well. Enraged, ruthless, Cat plays cat to the Anaconda's mouse, killing in cold and in hot blood to free his daughter and to drink deep of vengeance. A bit slow around the middle, where travelogue vies with suspense; elsewhere, grade-A escapist fare featuring richly colorful characters, a turbo-plot that fuels on Middle-American nightmares, and well-timed dollops of sex and violence. Woods pushes bright red buttons here, but who cares? The alarms they set off make for grand fun. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Successful businessman Cat Catledge's charmed life comes adrift from its moorings when his wife and daughter are murdered in a boat off the coast of Colombia. The numbness he experiences in the wake of the tragedy is broken by a phone call revealing that his daughter is alive and in terrible danger. Woods, the Edgar-winning author of Chiefs (Booklist 77:1126 Ap 15 81), follows Cat on a desperate search in which he is helped by an Australian soldier-of-fortune, a beautiful journalist, and, later, as his quest leads to the stronghold of a Harvard-educated Colombian drug lord, by his long-estranged son. Woods has a talent for high-energy action and a remarkable skill at creating tender moments in the midst of the frenzy. Superior adventure fare. PLR. [OCLC] 88-3174
Excerpts
Excerpts
White Cargo Chapter One Wendell Catledge sat up and squinted at the smudge on the horizon. It should not have been a surprise, he thought, but it was. The boat slid smoothly along in the light wind, and even the slight movement made it hard to focus on the shape, but it wasn't a ship or an oil rig, and in the early morning light, it seemed to be pink. He pulled at his beard and ran a hand through his hair, which was a good six months overdue for cutting. Hell, it just might be, it just might be what he guessed it was. He glanced at the sails, left the autopilot in charge, and climbed down the companionway ladder to the navigation station. As he slid into the chart table seat he allowed himself yet another look at his instrument array. It was all there -- full Brookes & Gatehouse electronics, VHF and SSB radios, loran, Satnav, Weatherfax, a compact personal computer, and his own brainchild and namesake, the Cat One printer. That little machine had brought him all this -- the yacht, the gear, and the time to sail. Cat had waked up one morning and realized that, after nearly thirty years in electronics, he was an overnight success. He gave the printer a fatherly pat and turned to his chart of the southern Caribbean. He pushed a button on the loran and got a readout of longitude and latitude, then plotted the coordinates on his chart and confirmed his suspicion. They were south of their course from Antigua to Panama and the Canal, and the smudge on the horizon wasn't all that far off the rhumb line. A tiny thrill ran through him. This is what it's all about, he thought, that little thrill of discovery, pushing back the boundaries, punching through the envelope. He laughed aloud to himself, then he banged his flat palm onto the chart table. "All hands on deck!" he shouted, grabbing the binoculars and starting for the companionway ladder. "All hands on deck!" he yelled again, pausing in the hatchway, "Come on, everybody, shake it!" There was a rustling noise from the after cabin and a loud thump from the forepeak. He raised the glasses and focused on the distant, pink smudge. It was. It was, indeed. Katie was the first into the cockpit, rubbing her eyes. Jinx was a step or two behind, having paused long enough to find a life jacket. "What is it, Cat? What's wrong?" his wife demanded. "What's going on, Daddy?" Jinx yelled, wide-eyed. He was pleased that, in her excitement, Jinx had forgotten to call him Cat. When she addressed him as an equal, it reminded him she was growing up -- had grown up. "Right over there," he said, pointing at the smudge. Both women squinted at the horizon, shielding their eyes from the sun, which was now just above the horizon, big and hot. "What is it?" Jinx demanded. "I can only see sort of a smudge -- " "That's South America, kid," he replied. "Never let it be said your old man didn't show you South America." She turned to him, a look of astonished disgust spreading over her face. "You mean you got me out of the sack for that?" She turned to her mother and shrugged, spreading her hands. "For Christ's sake, Cat," his wife said, "I thought we were sinking." Both women turned back toward the companionway. "Hey, wait a minute, guys," Cat said, thrusting the chart toward them, "that smudge is the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, a little mountain range that goes up to nearly nineteen thousand feet; that's the La Guajira Peninsula of Colombia out there; just south of it is the fabled Venezuelan Port of Maracaibo. Doesn't that name send a chill right through you?" "It sends a yawn right through me," Jinx said, yawning. "No, wait a minute, kitten," Katie said to her daughter. "Look at it through the glasses. Your father didn't bring us all this way to miss this sort of thing." Jinx took the binoculars and looked through them at the smudge. "Gee," she said, flatly, "you're right, it's a mountain. I've never seen a mountain before." She handed the glasses back to her mother. Katie raised the glasses to her eyes. "You're right, it's a mountain. I've never seen a mountain before, either. Wow." She handed the binoculars back to Cat. "Can we go back to bed now?" "Aw, listen, I know it's early, but you've got to get into the spirit. How would you like to have lunch in Colombia? How about that for a little unscheduled adventure?" "I thought you were anxious to get through the Canal," Katie replied. "Well, what the hell? It's not much out of the way, and we need to get that alternator fixed, you know. No more showers or microwave or hair dryer until we can charge the batteries again, and all that stuff in the freezer is going to go, too." The alternator had been down for two days, and they didn't have a spare. "Take a look here, both of you," Cat said, spreading the chart on a cockpit seat. "Here's Santa Marta, just down here. It's a commercial port, and they're bound to have some sort of electrical repair place there. " "Listen, I don't like what I hear about Colombia," Katie said. "All I hear is pickpockets and drugs and stuff. Sounds like a pretty rough place to me." "Don't believe everything you read in the papers," Cat replied. "Hell, lots of people go there all the time. It's just like any other place; a few of them get ripped off, sure. We've been in neighborhoods in Atlanta that were probably as dangerous as anything in Santa Marta." "I don't know, Cat." "Listen, Mom," Jinx broke in, "I don't mind..." White Cargo . Copyright © by Stuart Woods. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from White Cargo by Stuart Woods All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
