Deadly Traffic

Reporter Will Harper gets more than he bargained for when a frightened teenager surfaces with a story of human trafficking close to home. She is a young Guatemalan immigrant who has just fled the upscale estate where she worked as a live-in maid, a captivity that began when the smugglers she paid to bring her into the country turned on her and her siblings. Hired thugs working for the sugar magnate who held her are hunting her down, and her brother and sister have been sold to unknown buyers. She is determined to find them.

Will soon uncovers a wider operation made up of crooked farmers, ruthless smuggling guides, Russian gangsters and a crew of hired enforcers. Their business is selling vulnerable migrants into grueling field labor and forced sex work. A local newspaper hires Will and his live-in partner Callie to dig into slavery in Florida, giving them free rein to report as much or as little as they wish. Much of their research takes place aboard Will's cherished yacht, the WanderLust.

The assignment turns urgent when Will discovers waterborne sex trafficking, a grim new meaning for the phrase "party boat." He learns that one of the missing siblings is held on a notorious vessel, and he must mount a fast, dangerous rescue. Readers who enjoy John D. Macdonald, or the Florida crime novels of Dawn McKenna and Wayne Stinnett, may find this book appealing.