Swimming to Catalina

now.
    This interview was originally published July 1998 inThe Internet Writing Journal (R),
    http://www.writerswrite.com.

    Stone Barrington: The First Five
    New York Dead;Dirt;Dead in the Water;Swimming to Catalina;Worst Fears Realized
    New York Dead
    Everyone is always telling Stone Barrington that he’s too smart to be a cop, but it’s pure luck that places him on the streets in the dead of night, just in time to witness the horrifying incident that turns his life inside out.
    Suddenly he is on the front page of every New York newspaper, and his life is hopelessly entwined in the increasingly shocking life (and perhaps death) of Sasha Nijinsky, the country’s hottest and most beautiful television anchorwoman.
    No matter where he turns, the case is waiting for him, haunting his nights and turning his days into a living hell. Stone finds himself caught in a perilous web of unspeakable crimes, dangerous friends, and sexual depravity that has throughout it one common thread: Sasha.
    “Hollywood-slick and fast-moving”
    —Los Angeles Daily News
    “Suspenseful and surprising”
    —Atlanta Constitution
    Dirt
    Feared and disliked both for her poison pen and for her ice-queen persona, gossip columnist Amanda Dart finds the tables have turned. When an anonymous gossipmonger begins faxing the scathing details of Amanda’s sexual indiscretions to national opinion makers, she turns to Stone Barrington—ex-cop, fulltime lawyer, and sometime investigator—for help.
    “This slickly entertaining suspenser displays Woods at the top of his game with no signs of flagging…. The narrative rockets toward an abrupt but absolutely stunning denouement. Using all his skills here, and subtly reminiscent of the waggish P.G. Wodehouse, Woods delivers a marvelously sophisticated, thoroughly modern, old-fashioned read.”
    —Publishers Weekly
    “The devious plot…deftly skewering society types, would be enough to hook most of us, but veteran thriller writer Woods…shrewdly stacks the deck further by bringing back Barrington, the immensely likable star of…New York Dead. The result makes for a lost weekend’s worth of dirty fun—the kind you would want your friends to find out about.”
    —People
    Dead in the Water
    A beautiful young woman sails a large yacht into the harbor of the lovely Caribbean island nation of St. Marks.
    Alone.
    But she had departed from the other side of the Atlantic in the company of her husband, a well-known writer. His absence places Allison Manning under the intense 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 Calderreally want her back?
    Peoplemagazine’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