Black Horizon

Starred review from January 13, 2014
Bestseller Grippando draws inspiration from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill for his fantastic 11th Jack Swyteck novel (after 2013’s Blood Money). Criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck and his new wife, FBI agent Andie Henning, cut short their honeymoon in the Florida Keys after an explosion on Scarborough 8, an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, results in a massive crude oil spill. Andie returns to Washington, D.C., where FBI higher-ups suspect sabotage was involved in the disaster. Back in Florida, Jack agrees to represent Bianca Lopez, the widow of a Cuban man killed on the rig, in a wrongful-death suit. In a concerted effort to get the case dismissed, the Chinese-Russian-Cuban oil consortium that owns the rig claims that Bianca’s marriage doesn’t exist. As Jack pursues the truth, he is kidnapped in Cuba and later threatened with disbarment by the FBI. Finely crafted dialogue and a realistic yet nuanced hero make this thriller a standout. Agent: Richard Pine, Inkwell Management.

Jonathan Davis, suave and manly as ever, reprises his narration of the Jack Swyteck series. This time the Miami criminal attorney is pursuing a settlement from multinational owners of an oil rig that exploded near the Florida Keys. Davis portrays the stalwart Swyteck consistently, even through a few implausible plot twists. But Davis's vocal skills are best applied in the dialogue of the shady Cubans, who insist they have complete control of the disaster recovery; the demanding Russian thugs, who may or may not be involved in Swyteck's kidnapping; and the slippery Chinese trader who conceals secrets about the construction of the rig. When Swyteck discovers that his wive, an undercover FBI agent, is working the other side of the case, Davis reveals a glimmer of Swyteck's insecurities. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

October 1, 2013
Following a drilling explosion in Cuban waters, not so far from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, attorney Jack Swyteck finds himself representing a woman whose husband died on the oil rig. Grippando's 21st novel.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2013

Following a drilling explosion in Cuban waters, not so far from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, attorney Jack Swyteck finds himself representing a woman whose husband died on the oil rig. Grippando's 21st novel.

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2014
In Grippando's fast-moving 21st, an oil-rig disaster drags Florida lawyer Jack Swyteck into lawsuits against everyone in the known universe. Since American corporations can't enter into agreements to explore the Caribbean waters off Cuba, the Cubans themselves, partnering with Russian, Chinese and Venezuelan interests, have launched the Scarborough 8, a behemoth platform assembled in China, to search for oil deep beneath the seas. That search ends when an explosion aboard the rig kills derrick worker Rafael Lopez and 15 other workers and unleashes a massive spill American relief forces are powerless to stem. As oil slicks approach the Florida Keys, Jack, his honeymoon already interrupted when his bride, undercover agent Andie Henning, is called away for another hush-hush FBI operation, reluctantly agrees to help Rafael's widow, Bianca, prosecute her wrongful-death suit against the owners of Scarborough 8. In the story's irresistible middle section, Jack dukes it out in a Key West courtroom with Luis Candela, the lawyer representing Petroleos de Venezuela, who throws up one roadblock and smokescreen after another, including a stunner: Bianca can't have been legally married to Rafael at the time of his death because he was engaged to Josefina Fuentes, a boxer he'd known since his childhood in Havana. Candela's allegation is the cue for legal quiddities to dissolve into a wild third-act scramble for the truth that takes Jack and his old friend (and ex-client) Theo Knight on a trip to Cuba, then to the Bahamas, where Theo is framed for murder. Think nothing else can go wrong? Think again. Perhaps the most successful of Jack's 11 cases (Blood Money, 2013, etc.). As usual, the characters are sketched in only lightly, but readers immersed in the rewardingly complex tangle of political/legal problems sparked by the Deepwater Horizon disaster--sorry, the Scarborough 8 disaster--will never notice.

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