Force 12 - Tapa dura

In the chilling tradition of The Perfect Storm, a technothriller involving an ocean yacht race contested, literally, to the death.From the author of a series of outstanding international thrillers comes the tale of Rex Wyman, a world-famous software billionaire who is determined to win the world's longest and most challenging yacht race, from San Francisco to Japan via the Alaska -- through some of the roughest seas imaginable. He sets out to do so onboard the Victory, a 75-million-dollar racing yacht designed and navigated entirely by computer.Wyman is desperately in need of this victory: his business empire is crumbling, his assets dwindling, and only a public-relations coup like triumph for Victory can save him. But not even his girlfriend Gwen, a beautiful and gifted computer programmer, realizes the lengths he will go to in order to win. Meanwhile, he must evade a long list of secret enemies intent on making this ocean race his last one. So, when an enormous sub-arctic storm engulfs the Victory, the stakes become not just win-or-lose but a matter of life and death.

James Thayer, author of the gripping suspense novels White Star, Five Past Midnight and Terminal Event, is an attorney writing full-time. He lives in Seattle Washington.