Samuel J Parker's Thriller Novels

Red Snapper, my first novel, set in Jamaica has just been republished.

RED SNAPPER – THE STORY CIA agent, Carlton Davies, witnesses the violent revolution in Grenada and is the last foreigner to leave before Maurice Bishop and his Cuban backed revolutionaries take over the country. The CIA agent starts gathering evidence that Michael Manley, Prime Minister of Jamaica, is planning to take Jamaica down a similar route to Grenada. Manley is a strong supporter of Fidel Castro but when Castro is appointed Chairman of the Non Aligned Movement, the CIA decides it is time to stop further Cuban inspired change in the region. Jamaica is the chosen battleground. So worried are the CIA about the march of communism in their ‘backyard’ they appoint CIA Head of Station, Wynton McKenna, as the man to put a stop to Cuban influence. An election is approaching and there is mounting evidence the Cubans are destabilising the country – using proven tactics to frighten the electorate into voting for Manley’s pro-Cuban Peoples National Party. McKenna, hands tied by President Jimmy Carter’s conciliatory mentality towards Cuba, engages the anti-Castro brigade operating out of Miami - men who fled the country after the revolution in Cuba, veterans of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and dedicated to overthrowing Castro. Both the CIA and the anti-Castro brigade have links to the Mafia. All have designs on Jamaica, all need each other, all have different agendas and Red Snapper is the story of how these different relationships play out. The situation is further complicated by a love affair between the CIA agent Carlton Davies and the married daughter of the leader of the anti-Castro brigade, Roberto Santos. An affair designed to test personal loyalties to the limit. The story builds to a climax when, on 30th October 1979, the Jamaicans go to the polls to vote in their next government. An election that resulted in over 900 murders – many at the hands of Cuban and CIA backed activists.