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.

February 1, 2014
The eleventh Jack Swyteck novel opens with the attorney and his new wife, FBI agent Andi Henning, honeymooning in the Florida Keys. The honeymoon is cut short, though, by an offshore disaster: an oil-drilling platform in Cuban waters has exploded, pumping oil into the ocean. Almost immediately, Jack is asked to represent a woman whose husband died in the explosion in a wrongful-death suit against the platform's owners (it's owned by the Venezuelan government but was manufactured by a Chinese company). Meanwhile Andi is sent off on an undercover assignment. Jack knows only that it involves the Chinese, but it quickly turns out that Andi's case could be closely connected to Jack's own. With a story that's ripped from the recent headlines (remember the 2010 BP oil spill?), this is a solid legal thriller that should appeal to the author's fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

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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