Retired baseball player Jack Patterson becomes suspicious after his younger sister dies in a Pacific Ocean rip tide while on vacation in Costa Rica. Jack has to go there to find answers to troubling questions. But soon he is hijacked by a gang of self-described justice avengers led by a young and icy Costa Rican-American woman who carries twin pistols strapped to her chest and does not balk at using a car battery and cables to get the answers she needs. Jack soon helps uncover corruption and greed that runs counter to the country's laid-back slogan of Pura Vida, the pure life. The crimes seem to come from the highest levels of the Central American nation's society as the pair try to find the kidnapped sister of the gun-totting woman. They are shocked to find they are dealing with baby sellers and illegal adoptions amid a swamp of criminality. Jack and his new teammates confront a litany of the dark secrets of the vacationland and make narrow escapes with six infants rescued from the baby sellers but with prices put on their heads by the intellectual authors of the loose criminal network. James J. Brodell considers himself a skeptic or an iconoclast, perhaps due to the 50 years as a reporter and editor. His novels and short stories builds on the wacky incidents he has witnessed. He said he prefers short stories because he has a short attention span.
