Dead in the Water

scrutiny of St. Marks’s considerable Minister of Justice, Sir Winston Sutherland—and, therefore, under the protection of the otherwise vacationing Stone Barrington.
    Sir Winston’s motives are unclear but his methods bear little resemblance to the judicial system ex-cop attorney Stone is accustomed to navigating—and Stone finds himself inextricably caught in a swirling storm of island madness and murder, made worse by a hurricane of sensational press coverage.
    “One of his best…Woods is a pro and this goes by like a summer breeze, with just enough heat to make you sweat.”
— Detroit News
    “Fast paced…Thoroughly entertaining.”
— Publishers Weekly
Swimming to Catalina
    Stone Barrington had thought he’d heard the last of Arrington Carter after she’d left him to get engaged to Vance Calder, Hollywood’s hottest star. The last thing Stone expected was a desperate call from Calder.
    Arrington has vanished, and her new fiancé wants Stone to come to L.A. and find her.
    The assignment turns out to be the most dangerous and treacherous of Stone’s career. Powerful people are gunning for him. Where is Arrington? Why did she disappear? And does Vance Calder really want her back?
    People magazine’s “Page Turner of the Week”
    “A heck of a plot, intrigue, and cover-up between the first page and the last.”
— San Antonio Express News
Worst Fears Realized
    It is the scenario that every ex-policeman dreads—all around him people are dying, and Stone Barrington suspects the killer may be someone he’d put in prison years before. Stone hooks up with his ex-partner from the NYPD, Dino Bacchetti, now the head of detectives in the 19th Precinct, and the two men must pool their resources to protect those close to them.
    Stone’s former love, Arrington, now married to movie star Vance Calder, is back, too, and nose-to-nose with the new woman in Stone’s life—who has a Mafia bloodline and who may be as dangerous as she is beautiful.
    From a premier table at Elaine’s to dark back alleys where lurk Armani-clad mobsters with the latest lethal accessories, Stone launches a life-and-death hunt that will test him as no case has ever done before.
    “Satisfying to the last dirty deed…This seductive novel will have readers twitching with suspense.”
— Library Journal
    “Excellent…A fun read for fans of undercover agents who get plenty of action under the covers.”
— USA Today
    More Stone Barrington and Stuart Woods coming from PerfectBound…
    The five Stone Barrington novels described above (there are, to date, nine, also including L.A. Dead ; Cold Paradise ; The Short Forever ) are available from HarperCollins e-books as of April 2003. Please visit www.perfectbound.com for details of and to purchase these five titles and other Stuart Woods e-books titles. And get all the latest news on Stuart Woods at www.stuartwoods.com.
    And new in hardcover from Stuart Woods…
Dirty Work
    Back in New York City after the London adventures of The Short Forever , cop-turned-lawyer Stone Barrington is approached by a colleague at the firm of Woodman & Weld seeking help with a celebrity divorce case.
    Heiress Elena Marks needs proof of her layabout husband’s infidelity before she can begin divorce proceedings. When the undercover work Stone sets up turns dirty—and catastrophic—leaving the errant husband dead and the mystery woman gone without a trace, Stone must clear his own good name and find a killer hiding among the glitterati of New York’s high society.
    Carpenter—the beautiful British intelligence agent first encountered in The Short Forever —arrives in New York to begin an investigation of her own; Stone suspects that her case is strangely connected to the dead husband. And he and Dino, his former NYPD partner, are set to face the most bizarre and challenging assignment of their very colorful careers.

About the Author
    Stuart Woods was born in Manchester, Georgia; graduated from the University of Georgia; and served in the Air National Guard. A professional sailor, Mr. Woods participated in the Observer Single-handed Transatlantic Race (OSTAR) in 1976 and the catastrophic Fastnet Race in 1979, in which fifteen competitors died.
    W.W. Norton published Woods’s first novel, Chiefs , in 1981. It won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America that year and was made into a six-hour television drama starring Charlton Heston.
    Mr. Woods, who has written twenty-six novels—including