While vacationing
with her mother in Havana, a 10-year old American girl is taken by members of a
child sex ring intent on selling her into forced prostitution. When the human
traffickers avoid capture and escape the island, the father of the girl,
surgeon Raymond Peters, decides to take matters into his own hands and
initiates a worldwide investigation. The Cuban government assigns a lethal
professional assassin named Marcela to help Raymond track down the culprits.
The search for Stephanie takes the unlikely pair – a man who has sworn an oath
to save lives and a woman who kills for a living -- to the Middle East in the
hunt for the mysterious mastermind, Mohamed. Working against the clock, Raymond
and Marcela must pull out all stops to save Stephanie and flee Dubai before
Mohamed and his gang of thugs kill them.
Giveaway:
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My Impressions:
This was an excellent book that had you on the edge of your seat the whole way through hanging on through every twist and turn excited to find out what was going to happen next. I was not sure what to expect with this book, but I was blown away with what I received. Most books I read lately I can figure out the whole plot before I am even half way through with the book, but David does an amazing job feeding you slowly and keeping you begging for more. Right when I think I have it all figured out, BAM, I get hit out of left field.
What really grips you is the the premise of the book is one that you can actually imagine playing out in real life. The characters are complex, easy to relate to, hate and fall in love with. I don't want to say to much and give the book away, but it is definitely on my recommendation list.
Enjoy an Excerpt:
The woman looked like the queen of a redneck trailer park.
She had a face like poured concrete painted pink, and limp Clairol-blonde hair.
She wore a stamped polyester dress in shades of burnt orange, and pink flip
flops. Her name was Tammy – short for Tamara, she said.
Definitely not my typical patient, Mon thought.
But then the woman wasn’t there as a patient. Tammy had come
to him highly recommended by Anatoli Vorsov, a Russian businessman he’d been
doing business with for over a year now.
Mon leaned back in his chair behind the wooden desk in the
office he kept in the clinic precisely for these transactions and steepled his
fingers. He allowed his mind to wonder, but not too much. He had to be alert.
It was amazing how his life had changed since his father
brought him to Miami from Cuba years ago. How many years? Eight, or was it
nine? So many things had happened during that time, including the fact that he
and his father didn’t talk to each other anymore. One thing for sure, he had
found a way to make money in the United States, big money, much more money than
he ever hoped to make in Cuba.
He smiled inwardly and watched the “Queen”, who was giving
him a broad smile.
“Good deal, no?”
She had a rough accent, as rough as her porous complexion,
and the unsettling quirk of leaving out of her speech all the articles and most
of the verbs. She sounded like a bad Hollywood imitation of an Indian in a
cheap western, but not exactly. Mon couldn’t quite figure out where she was
from. The fact mortified him, for some reason. He guessed she was from
somewhere in Eastern Europe -- Ukraine, Belarus or Moldova. Maybe she was
Russian, like Anatoli. Mon had met many Russians in Cuba, but none quite like
this woman. Mon wasn’t very good with accents, anyway. He hadn’t lived in the
United States long enough to develop a discriminating ear for accents. Hell, he
was still struggling to master English. He hated the language. It was
constantly changing. It had few grammatical rules and most had countless
exceptions. Then there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of idioms that didn’t
make sense.
As his instructor at the Miami Dade Community College always
said, “English is a language you have to memorize.”
“Well?” the woman asked.
“Well what?”
Tammy cocked her head without moving one curly hair. “You
want business or not?”
Mon’s curiosity was piqued by the woman’s proposition. He
just didn’t know whether he could trust her. She had promised to provide him
with five hundred new Medicare patients. Mon already had more than enough
patients now. He was doing so well financially, he had to open offshore
accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland to shelter much of that money
from the US Treasury and not pay taxes. Still, five hundred new Medicare
accounts were tempting. He could always open another offshore account somewhere
else. He’d read somewhere that Germany was offering excellent tax shelters
these days. Quickly, he calculated what he could bill those five hundred new
patients – equipment, physical therapy, HIV treatments….The possibilities were
almost endless, and the US Federal authorities were so lax and easy to fool.
Mon took a deep breath. He was definitely interested. What a
wonderful city Miami was. What a wonderful country the United States was. It
was without doubt the land of opportunity. Its streets were paved with gold.
You just had to know where to prospect it and how to extract it. And he
certainly knew how.
“I want,” he said.
Tammy stretched her thin lips into an awful smile. Mon
detected some solid gold teeth. Her dental work was definitely foreign.
“Where are you from?”
“Here and there.” She turned serious, which was a blessing
because her smile was turning Mon’s stomach. “Why you ask?”
“I like to know who I’m doing business with.”
Tammy frowned and rubbed her chin. “Ukraine.”
“Have you been here long?”
“Miami?”
“Miami. The United States. Whatever.”
“Miami, seven months. United States, two years.”
There she went again, eating up all the articles and the
verbs. His English teacher would have been horrified.
“I want one thousand dollar patient. You give two hundred
dollars more to patient for card number.”
Twelve hundred bucks per patient was a reasonable number. It
was a bargain, actually. Mon knew he could make easily one hundred and twenty
thousand from each patient. His mind quickly calculated the multiple ways he
could legally charge the Medicare system. Oh, America was definitely the land
of opportunity. He wondered if Tammy expected him to negotiate. Eastern
Europeans liked to barter. Was he supposed to negotiate? She fixed her cold
blue eyes on him, waiting for his response. He cleared his throat.
“That, bottom price,” she said as if reading his mind. “You
like, no?”
Mon didn’t hesitate. Why negotiate? The deal Tammy had
offered him was almost too good to be true.
“I like, yes,” he said.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
David Pereda is an award-winning author who enjoys crafting
political thrillers and mainstream novels. His books have won the Lighthouse
Book Awards, the Royal Palm Awards, the National Indie Excellence Awards, and
the Readers Favorite Awards. He has traveled to more than thirty countries
around the world and speaks four languages. Before devoting his time solely to
writing and teaching, Pereda had a rich and successful international consulting
career with global giant Booz Allen Hamilton, where he worked with the
governments of Mexico, Venezuela, Peru and Qatar, among others.
A member of MENSA, Pereda earned his MBA from Pepperdine
University in California. He earned bachelor degrees in English literature and
mathematics at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He loves sports and
has won many prizes competing in track and show-jumping equestrian events.
Pereda lives with his youngest daughter Sophia in Asheville, North
Carolina. He teaches mathematics and English at the Asheville-Buncombe
Community College.
Visit him online at:
www.davidpereda.com
Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/twin-powers-david-pereda/1121211588?ean=9781630661113
Other titles
by David Pereda:
However Long
the Night
Havana: Top
Secret
Havana:
Killing Castro
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