Illness & Death Haunts Cruise Line!

For the most part, the hundreds of illnesses we read about on cruises are contact-related. Starting with contaminated food, or using poor hand-washing techniques, a gastrointestinal illness easily spreads among the thousands of people living and eating in close quarters. Such viral infections take hours or even days to show symptoms. Very rarely does an illness result in death on a cruise, but it does happen – remember Legionnaire’s Disease, which sickened sixteen and killed one in 1994. In Donna Dawson’s book, “Vengeance” (Word Alive Press, www.authordonnadawson.com) the first symptoms of horrible death starts in seconds, leading to messy demise in mere hours, even minutes. And it keeps happening among passengers at the mercy of a ruthless killer while they sail the Pacific, bound for Hawaii.

Donna spins a fast paced tale when her hero, FBI Special Agent James Kirk Benedict, happens to be on board the cruise. Equipped with a satellite phone, he maintains contact with fellow Bureau members ashore in San Diego, searching for links among the victims, to find surprising questions. How does a mega-deadly version of Agent Orange create rapid death and such deadly menace? And why would Agent Orange be found on board, in any dose? After all, even in tiny parts per million, the Vietnam era chemical resulted in life-long devastation to our troops, our enemy, and the land around them. While tracking down the killer on board Benedict and his team find links to a mastermind known as “Nam.” Who is Nam; is he also responsible for the cruise deaths? Could he be the person who, a few years before, wiped out a fishing boat, a Beluga whale, and an entire Arctic village who tried to eat it – all using an Agent Orange derivative?

Donna’s unusual setting, chemical dangers, plot twists and fascinating use of modern technology keep “Vengeance” captivating. To further sweeten the mix, she gives Agent Benedict a doctor girlfriend back on shore, a co-worker striving to save the sanity of a young child Benedict had earlier saved from death, but not from a brutal kidnapping and rape. Dr. Julie Holding employs unusual means to help the child, Cassandra – prayer and Bible-study. Cassandra is a victim being recovered with positive means – polar opposite to Nam who is avenging his father, dead as a result of wartime Agent Orange exposure. The heart-pounding final chapters of this suspenseful novel weave all these characters into a deadly encounter threatening the lives of each.

Discussing the unusual aspects of this finale, the author reminds us that sometimes it takes reaching beyond normal means to survive: “Everyone has two choices in recovering as a victim: you can rise above it as Dr. Julie is helping Cassandra to do; or you can ‘get even’ as Nam has done with that vengeance resulting in the victimization of others.”

About the Author
Donna Dawson is living with her husband on a 100 acre “hobby farm” in Ontario, Canada. With several more books on the way, Donna is proud to announce “Vengeance” is in the running in three awards contests (Eppy – the book is available in electronic form; Ippy for works in Independent Publishing; and The Word Guild where it is featured in 3 categories: Mystery/Suspense, Independent and Christian.)