When the Brazilian liner

Porto Alegre

docked in Barbados in 1956, the passengers reveled in the gay carnival-time hysteria ashore, while the few officers left aboard invited a four-man calypso band to liven up the dull shipboard routine. But the smiling musicians were even more adept at cracking the purser’s safe than playing their steel drums, and the

Porto Alegre

left the friendly Caribbean minus half a million dollars’ worth of gems. A young police officer named Da Silva nailed the thieves, sent them to jail, and waited fifteen years for the release of the last surviving member of the gang to lead him to the well-hidden loot. But prison had changed William Trelawney McNeil, mastermind of the shipboard heist. Once a charming lady killer, now a bitter, half-mad adversary, he leads Da Silva on a danger-laden chase through a green hell where the natives hate the Brazilian detective as much as McNeil himself.