Read Panama Jack, the exciting international spy thriller from award-winning journalist and Latin America expert Joachim Bamrud. Inspired by Ian Flemming's James Bond and Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt, Bamrud has created a thriller set around veteran CIA agent Jack Dallas and the Panama Canal, one of the world's key transshipment points for cargo traffic. Other locations include Shanghai, Miami and Monte Carlo.
Lived in Panama Bamrud has lived in Panama twice - in the early 1990's, right after the U.S. invasion that ousted strongman Manuel Noriega, and in the late 1990's, when Panama was preparing to receive the canal from the United States. During that time he was able to travel throughout the country in locations ranging from the Gatun Lake, where he spent a night while crossing the canal, to the stunning San Blas islands and the more luxury environment of Contadora Island, featured in Panama Jack.
Panama Jack Plot In 1999, Admiral Thomas Moorer, the former chairman of the the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged that China planned to take over the Panama Canal and use the area to launch a nuclear attack on the United States. In the U.S. Senate, Trent Lott, the then-Republican Senate Majority Leader, expressed concern that the Chinese could deny U.S. ships passage. Now, a CIA informant in Panama with possible information on the Chinese take-over has been killed and the agency has to again look at the potential Communist threat. It steps up its investigation by sending veteran CIA agent Jack Dallas to find out the truth. A former Navy diver, Dallas has to dive deep into the canal and the Hong Kong company that runs the canal ports. His investigation leads him to a prominent businessman in Shanghai, bankers in Monaco and Russian mobsters in Miami before finding out the stunning truth and racing to prevent a major catastrophe in the canal.
