Showing results by author "Wayne Stinnett" in All Categories

Things in the Middle Florida Keys aren’t as idyllic as they seem. If one looks closely, there’s a layer of dirt just below the surface. The butt-ugly kind of dirt that’s hard to get off. Things move slowly in the Keys—locals call it island time—but there are some for whom it seems that time is at a standstill; whose clocks revolve only around the tides, fish migrations, and the rising and setting of the sun and moon. Jesse McDermitt remembers the Keys the way he’d first found them as a young man.

Where Jerry Snyder goes, trouble follows. Someone tried to kill him and his bride on their honeymoon in the Virgin Islands. And moving there permanently is proving to be anything but tranquil.

After undergoing many weeks of training during the harsh winter months in the frozen north, Jesse McDermitt and Rusty Thurman are ready for some time off, their last leave period in their first year in the Marine Corps. Only this time, it’s not palm trees and sunny tropical beaches they’ll be unwinding at, but diving in the frigid and treacherous coastal waters off the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the famed Graveyard of the Atlantic, thought to hold great wealth in the cold embrace of her murky depths.

When his wife, Grace, and their new sailboat go missing, Nathan Fitzgerald will do anything and everything to get her back. Nathan, a high school football coach in the Florida Keys, is in way over his head. Turning to strangers when authorities are reluctant to help, he begins a frantic international hunt. Buckle up as Graceless takes you on an exhilarating chase around the Caribbean with twists at every stop. Written in four parts by four best-selling Tropical Authors, the story plunges Nathan into the worlds of each author's characters in a desperate search for Grace.

Key West’s sultry summer heat isn't for the faint of heart. But Michal Grabowski is running from a Pittsburgh cocaine dealer intent on killing him in a slow and painful manner, and Key West is the end of the road. Retired Marine Jesse McDermitt enjoys the summer heat and quiet solitude of his tiny island home in the back country. When Jesse discovers that Michal’s would-be killer is connected to recent murders in the Bahamas, he agrees to help the young man. Jesse doesn’t like murderers, smelly crack monsters or drug dealers running amok in his territory.

Jesse McDermitt lives alone on an isolated island in the Florida Keys where he runs a charter fishing business. Retired from the Marine Corps for six years, he wants nothing more than to relax, fish, dive and enjoy the laid back lifestyle of the islands. Russ, his former Platoon Sergeant and old friend, dies unexpectedly in a mysterious scuba diving accident and Jesse becomes suspicious.

Jesse McDermitt is back, just as he promised. This time, he is thrust into the heart of the Florida Panhandle's Tate's Hell State Forest, where the tranquil surroundings belie a dangerous secret—a network of clandestine meth labs hidden against the backdrop of the Forgotten Coast’s natural beauty. Jesse, a retired Marine turned charter boat captain, has brought his family to Apalachicola “for the oysters.” But being who he is, the leisurely cruise soon spins into a gripping quest to unravel the truth behind the illicit operations threatening the region.

Jesse McDermitt has done it. He has escaped the ugliness so pervasive in modern society, and along with his family and a few close friends, they have set out aboard a boat he designed himself for living long periods totally off the grid. The first couple of months are peaceful, uneventful, and by today's standards, quite boring. But the crew of Taranis have the sun, sea, and quiet coves to explore, where there aren't even any footprints in the sand. Until they reach their destination.

When a group of strangers purchase land on Tortola and Norman Island to set up a commune, the locals simply write them off as an odd sort - until one of their bloated bodies washes up on the shore of a nearby resort island. As luck would have it, Jesse McDermitt is visiting a friend on Norman Island after tracking a terrorist submarine from the Windward Islands. The sub was destroyed by locals on the Dutch island of Saba, so Jesse had nothing much else to do. What he wasn’t looking for was a murderous cult at the center of a drug manufacturing and distribution ring.

Jesse McDermitt has been grieving the loss of a loved one to terrorists. He’s been holed up on his secluded island home for months, numbing his mind and body with endless, mundane tasks. But he has a plan for vengeance. A friend approaches Jesse seeking help for her dad who's been pressured into running drugs for a dangerous Cuban smuggler. When Jesse learns that the smuggler is also an arms merchant for Hezbollah, the terrorist organization responsible for the death of someone close, he once again looks to settle the score.

A plane crash in 1976 left a young boy without a father, but 46 years later, when Eddie Rains loses his mother, a letter hidden among her possessions reveals a secret she’d kept to herself all those years. Driven by hope, Eddie sets out to discover the truth about the man he dearly loved yet barely knew. Aided by strangers he meets along the way, his challenging search turns deadly when one thing becomes crystal clear...he’s not the only one looking.

It'd been a long time; a lot of things had changed. Since sailing away from Cane Garden Bay, Jesse McDermitt had changed. Waking one morning, the smell of rum still on his breath, Jesse realizes he doesn't much like the change anymore. The mask that he'd freely put on didn't fit right. It was the mask of a drifting, womanizing boat bum, and it concealed his inner turmoil. Peeling off the mask, he soon realizes what a mess he's in.

Danger lurks in the sleepy little town of Marathon, in the middle of the Florida Keys, as well as in the swamps of the Everglades. But danger doesn't expect to run into a man like Jesse. A man who will not only respond swiftly in facing it, but with a vengeance unexpected.

In this fourth installment of the Jesse McDermitt series, Jesse faces an antagonist unlike any he's faced before, post-traumatic stress. A friend's son, who was dishonorably discharged from the Corps, is suffering from nightmares, brought on by the incident that was the catalyst for his discharge. With Jesse's help he learns to cope with his demons and gets his discharge overturned, so that he may once again serve the country he loves.

Unbeknownst to Jesse, an environmentally conscious woman from his past has stumbled onto a drug manufacturing cartel in Virginia while working on a pollution mitigation problem. The cartel responds by sending someone to kill people Jesse cares for. A contract killer stalks the woman all the way to Miami, leaving bodies in his wake. With the help of an old flame in the FBI, Jesse goes to the snow-covered Appalachians to get to the root of the trouble: an unscrupulous prosecutor and dirty sheriff, who are producing LSD on an unbelievable scale.

The quiet and solitude found in the backcountry and wetlands of south Florida has been shattered. Someone is using explosives to fish the ecologically fragile patch reefs in the shallow waters of Florida Bay, north of the Keys. Retired Marine Jesse McDermitt doesn't like explosions in his backyard. Knowing his penchant for inserting himself in matters best left to the authorities, his friends withhold information from him about the destruction to the delicate, living corals. Jesse doesn't much like this, either.

On Grassy Key, things aren’t as idyllic as they seem. The quiet, sleepy community has been awakened. A young woman with strong ties to the community is missing. A local craftsman, the last person to see the girl, is questioned and released. The girl’s friends are interviewed. Nobody knows what happened to Cobie, except that she left for work one day and didn’t arrive. The only lead is the girl’s car, parked where she worked. But it provides no clues, and nobody saw anything. Days go by. Then weeks. The case grows cold.

Six months out of high school and just days after finishing Marine boot camp, Jesse McDermitt is finally ready to unwind and have a little fun when he goes home on leave. But everything Jesse remembers—his friends, his family, the sparkling beaches and familiar waters of the Caloosahatchee River and Pine Island Sound, even his faithful Lab, Molly, have all changed.

It’s been three months since Jesse McDermitt had any time off to go back home to Florida. When two surprise openings on the leave roster open up, he and his friend Rusty Thurman jump on it, and head back to the Keys for some scuba diving. The husband of a local reporter’s friend has nearly been killed. Not once, but four times in less than a month. The reporter is Jesse’s new girlfriend and they become curious. How does a man survive four attempts on his life?

Jesse McDermitt is starting a new chapter in his life. As captain of the research vessel Ambrosia, his mission is to study the oceans and seafloor, searching for rich oil deposits. His unstated mission is to locate and eradicate the enemies of society on behalf of Armstrong Research, a secretive organization funded by some of the richest men in the world. When word gets out about a massive drug and human trafficking cartel moving tons of illegal drugs, along with hundreds of slave laborers, out of Venezuela, Jesse is tasked with stopping them at all cost.