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Peter Winthorpe operates a bed and breakfast on Shelter Island, NY with the aid of long-time confidante and companion Esmeralda, a woman highly skilled in the practice of Voodoo. Following the loss of his mother at the age of five, Peter has spent much of his life at sea. Logbooks handed down from a deceased family member are said to contain a secret: the site of a treasure lost in a long-ago shipwreck.
After escaping from a Mexican jail, the murderous Jim Macy and Casper Bennington obtain a small cargo ship and set sail in pursuit of the treasure. Macy seeks revenge against Esmeralda and Peter for an old grievance. He uses drugs to place a young woman named Amanda Paige into a zombie-like state, but Amanda resists Macy's stupefaction and escapes, soon finding herself in the care of Esmeralda. Meanwhile, billionaire Tyler Martin cultivates a party-loving persona and gathers to himself a small but tight-knit "band of brothers." Among them is a perpetual drunk named Jack Rogin, estranged from his father, whose fortunes change in an instant when father and son chance to meet again at the moment of the former's death.
Bodenschatz has delivered a competently written example of pulp fiction that will likely bring smiles to fans of the genre. Indeed, with its breezy tone, engaging heroes, and the prospect of lost treasure, The author's prose is accessible and often funny. A voodoo priestess, billionaires, bandits, murders, zombifying drugs, and Dickensian reversals of fortune are flung at the reader at a pace that never feels excessive. One can almost sense the author's eagerness to please. And though the introduction of so many characters initially threatens to confuse the reader, their various goals—staying alive, practicing Voodoo, getting rich—are so carefully delineated that the plot becomes almost cinematically straightforward as it chugs along.
The narrative doesn't linger on events. Yet, despite the rapid-fire machinations of the plot, the book has much to say about wealth, war, trauma, coincidence, and the invisible threads linking one person to another. "I can not begin to 'xplain why tings are as dey are," says Esmeralda, "all I know is we are all connected in one way or another"—an idea that the book then underscores by bringing together its disparate and far-flung characters in the finale.
Midway through, an appalling act of lethal sexual violence juxtaposes at odds with the "boy's own adventure" nature of the story, which may prove disturbing for some readers. The book loses a bit of momentum as it races towards its finish, as if the magic act of juggling so many balls has proved too daunting a feat. But with so many elements to the plot, it is actually a remarkable thing that they were juggled at all. The joy, as so often happens, is in the journey, and many readers will undoubtedly enjoy the trip.