Publisher's Synopsis
Barbados 1956 Jenna White, a successful New York attorney, overworked, frustrated, unfulfilled, and tired to the bone, flies off to Barbados for a much needed break. She is be caught up in a series of disastrous events resulting from greed, death, and in the midst of all this, she discovers the love of her life. As she unwinds, enjoying herself for the first time in a decade, Jenna meets and spends time with Ellis, a rich American playboy, Norman, a handsome Aussie derelict, and Quincy, a British charter boat captain. On a water skiing trip, Jenna unearths an old coin on Sandy Lane Beach. It turns out to be an old Spanish Doubloon, one of the infamous Pieces of Eight so often connected with the notorious pirates who frequented the island hundreds of years ago. Innocently showing the coin to her new found water skiing friends at the beach bar, she sets off an explosive chain of events that finds her group of water skiers setting out to locate a long lost treasure. Norman conspires with ex SAS Sergeant Smythe-Caulley, to steal the treasure when it is found. Into the mix charges Quincy, also ex SAS, and the nemesis of Smythe-Caulley. He sweeps Jenna off her feet and champions her search. Greed leads to murder when the small group finds a rotting chest of gold coins on the reef off Sandy Lane Beach. The confrontation between Jenna and Quincy, the hapless bystanders, and the murderous and vengeful Sargent, culminates in a deadly showdown at the abandoned, but still elegant, Farley Hill Plantation House. Stuart Rider lived in the tropics from 1946 to 1960. He spent most of those years, on and off, living on the island of Barbados.
