The Last Voyage of the Yankee Seas

Crime scene: Sweden and the Baltic. A harmless enough accident puts Laura on the scent of a murder whose traces lead back to those nineteen-eighties, which risked seeing the Cold War go red hot all of a sudden: from NATO´s double-track agreement, SS20 and Pershing cruise missiles, Strategic Defence Initiative, also known as Star Wars, all the way to the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the USSR - those were the catchphrases of that turbulent decade. For neutral, yet politically rollercoasting Sweden beyond ABBA and Pippi L., it all boiled down to the bizarre episode known as "Whiskey on the Rocks," aka the grounding of S-363, by whose sombre, silent shadow Laura and her sister Solitaire are being guided to the nest of the Grey Albatrosses, a Rotary of the international crime élite presided over by the mysterious Schramm. As always, the name Laura Forster vouches for exciting as well as humorous entertainment, seasoned, this time, with an unabashed homage to the unique biotope of the Stockholm and Åland Island skerries, Morlockian submariners and the endangered species of Tall Ship sailors.

German-born author Paul Werner is a widely travelled, retired simultaneous interpreter working in a dozen or so foreign languages. What spare time he was accorded between high-level conference sessions used to be taken up with skippering sailing yachts of any size and description, both as a passionate offshore racer and an indefatigable island cruiser. His favourite haunts used to be the West Indies on one side of the Atlantic and the Greek and Turkish Aegean on the other. Once retired, Paul made writing his third or fourth professional career. True to some ancient mariner's advice, he now praises the sea aloud while snugly staying on land in romantic old Heidelberg.