The Case of The Toxic Cruiseline

Rating:
Summary: On the Book Shelf
Review: June 13, 2000 - Rocky Ford Daily Gazette, Rocky Ford Colorado, Page 3

On The Book Shelf By Anne Thompson

Are our oceans the ultimate toxic dumping grounds? Can terrorists build a nuclear bomb? Those are the questions posed in a new book, The Case of The Toxic Cruiseline, an environmental crimes thriller, written by a husband and wife team of chemical and environmental engineers, Charles and Lidia LoPinto.

Book introduces sleuths, Juliana Dl Rio, a Puerto Rican environmental engineer and career bureaucrat, and Sean Ryan, Irish-born aging FBI a gent. Ryan, a recovering alcoholic, who no longer leads narcotics raids in the secret drug war, finds himself assigned to a newly formed environmental division of the FBI, led by Anna Gutierrez, a tough woman determined to bring polluters to justice.

Del Rio, before joining the new division, spent most of her time in the lab and the courtroom. Each of the three has a unique background that affects why they are on this team.

Mrs. Gutierrez's small daughter died of leukemia, because unknown to the family, their home was built over a dangerously deteriorating toxic dump, much like the widely publicized Love Canal.

Juliana Del Rio grew up on the small, beautiful Puerto Rican island of Viequez, which the American army took over as a bombing base, ousting its residents and ruining its natural beauty. Sean Ryan began as an Irish soldier, and then moved to the United States, where she became a naturalized citizen and joined the FBI. Ryan and Del Rio are assigned as a team posing as a vacationing husband and wife, in an undercover sting operation to gather evidence of illegal dumping from Alaskan cruise ships. Juliana and Sean are a poor match. She is young, arrogant and inexperienced, and he is chauvinistic and tough. On board the cruiseline they gather samples of materials including low-grade toxic chemicals being illegally dumped in the ocean for profit. However, they never expected to find a clandestine nuclear manufacturing facility in a remote area, operated by mobsters with criminal assistance of local government employees.

The action is fast and exciting although each agent disobeys origin orders. Thus, despite success in their efforts, they return to Washington D.C., uncertain if each still has a job.

The answers to the two questions at the beginning of this column and in The Case of The Toxic Cruiseline are "Yes." Indications that accompany information about the book suggest that this the first of a series of "Enviro-Crimes."

I hope there will be more, cause I truly enjoyed the fast pace of this exciting story, which the authors say is in the realm of possibility and catastrophe.

Rating:
Summary: All the good stuff is here for a thrilling read!
Review: Spring Issue of The Book Reader America's most independentreview of new books Scotts Valley, CA - Audience: about 100,000.

THECASE OF THE TOXIC CRUISELINE

Frighteningly current and pertinent. By Lidia Llama LoPinto and Charles LoPinto. EnviroCrime Publishers. All the good stuff is here for a thrilling read. The locale is coastal Alaska and its pristine waters plied regularly by cruise ships. The bad guys? They work overtime managing a toxic dumping operation, and on the side they peddle juiced-up nuclear waste just right for making dirty bombs. Some of those boom booms have the 49th state in mind as a target. Enter the exciting characters in this eco-thriller. One, a middle aged FBI agent named Sean Ryan, former narco, who is reassigned to the Environmental Crimes Unit. Ryan considers it a backward career move. His pride gets injured when he must pose as husband to Juliana Del Rio, a conceited, aggressive and equally stubborn investigator for the EPA. She's got only a science degree but, when the couple stumbles onto the mob of dumpers and terrorists, Juliana takes it personally and becomes heroine material. "Juliana took out the syringe and placed it into a container. She passed (the Geiger counter) over the material.The frequency of clicks increased." An informant comes up dead, but the team perseveres. They uncover techno-savvy criminals who use the vast ocean to dump anything--toxics, bodies, radioactive waste. These guys don't just tip over a barrel when the moon is hiding. "We believe the operation may be underground. They are a smart and dangerous group." The authors are engineers and this saga isn't far from the truth.