The Antilles Affair (Paperback)

A year after vanishing in the Caribbean, former Royal Navy petty officer Patrick Redman is found alive on a nameless island - starved, fevered, half-broken, and haunted by the woman he believes he failed to save. But rescue is not salvation. The world he returns to is caught in the shockwave of the 1983 Grenada invasion, and the truth of what happened to him has already been buried beneath murder, narcotics, and official convenience.

Before his disappearance, Patrick and Hannelore Friedman had been sailing north through the Grenadines, trying to leave old wounds behind. Instead, they stumbled onto a million dollars' worth of cocaine, a desperate American expatriate, and a corrupt island policeman with cartel ties and no tolerance for witnesses. One brutal night tears their lives apart. Patrick is forced to navigate his own stolen yacht at gunpoint, outthink two killers who know nothing of the sea, and survive a betrayal so savage it strips him down to instinct.

What follows is a fight not merely to stay alive, but to remain human.

From storm-lit reefs and abandoned anchorages to warships off Grenada and mangrove lagoons where violence waits in the heat, The Antilles Affair is a hard-edged Caribbean thriller about survival, grief, revenge, and the moral wreckage left when powerful men decide truth is negotiable. Patrick's enemies are not just smugglers and murderers, but policemen, agents, and officials willing to launder atrocity into paperwork if it keeps the right names clean.

Yet the novel's pulse comes from the people caught in that machinery: Hannelore, fierce and exacting, whose presence refuses to fade; Hayward, the profane old sailor whose battered decency hides under layers of rum and rage; Juanita, a child with more courage than the adults around her deserve; and Patrick himself, a man dragged through loss, hunger, violence, and guilt until only the essentials remain.

Gritty, atmospheric, and unsparing, The Antilles Affair moves with the pressure of a tightening noose. It is a story of boats and blood, of tropical beauty with rot beneath it, of survival purchased at terrible cost - and of the dangerous moment when a man who has already lost everything decides he is not finished.

'"Write about what you know and write truly" was the rule Ernest Hemingway (my 15th cousin, according to ancestry.com) lived by. He believed in utilizing personal experiences and true emotions to make a story believable. And that's what informs my own writing. You don't need to know the sea to be swept away by it. My thrillers are not written for sailors alone. They are written for anyone who loves suspense, danger, strong characters, and stories that pull you irresistibly onward. Because it's what I know, the maritime world provides the setting, but it is never a barrier: the language is clear, the stakes are human, and the drama is universal. You won't need a chart, a glossary, or any nautical experience to follow the story-only a taste for tension, intrigue, and adventure. '

Michael Rothery

Michael Rothery is a lifelong writer whose fiction is shaped by decades at sea. He began writing poems and letters long before turning to full-length fiction in 2012. He served twenty-five years in the Royal Navy, gaining extensive operational and maritime experience that now underpins the realism of his novels.

Alongside his writing career, he qualified as a yachtmaster and worked for a time on yacht deliveries. In 2015, he bought a sailing yacht in Greece and sailed solo to the Caribbean via the Atlantic Islands. He went on to cruise the Lesser Antilles for several years before crossing to the Azores. In 2024, he sold his boat and came ashore, bringing with him a lifetime of naval service, blue-water sailing, and firsthand maritime knowledge that informs every aspect of his writing.