From Library Journal Recent Edgar nominee (for Death of a Joyce Scholar , Morrow, 1989, as Bartholomew Gill) McGarrity makes a sharp departure from his usual form with this violent, morbidly fascinating thriller. Six friends on a sailing vacation in the Bahamas come upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone disastrously wrong. Led by a high-ranking New York City police officer, the group decides to help themselves to the millions in cash and cocaine left behind; one member jumps ship to avoid the destruction she knows is sure to follow. The Colombian drug lords unleash a beautiful, deaf assassin to recover their losses, and the body count begins to mount. McGarrity never makes any of the five very sympathetic, and the reader may well be rooting for the assassin. McGarrity does score solid points, though, when he points up the horrors of violence and the amorality bred by drugs. The moral ambiguity of the book's only sympathetic characters--oddly enough, two drug dealers--will make the reader ask whether redemption can, and should, come after so much death and destruction. Recommended for large fiction collections.
