J.M. Taylor's new thriller, Flash of Emerald, brings Harry Stoner back to the Suncoast long after an abortive operation in Cuba gave him his fill of Tampa and Ybor City. Corporal Harry Stoner began his special operations career with a night jump from the belly of a Strategic Air Command B-47 over Cuba for the CIA. Now retired from the Army and just a glorified clerk in the DIA, Stoner thought he was out of the killing. Summoned from his Washington DIA office, Stoner revisits the seamy side of Tampa's Ybor City and the continuing fight for Cuban freedom. Drawn into a web of international arms dealers, Stoner finds himself in the middle of a drugs-for-arms transaction. The stakes this time are his family - and a nuclear weapon stolen by fanatical terrorists. South Florida, especially the Suncoast centered around Tampa Bay, is ripe for a new series of novels. Personal triumphs and tragedies swirling around the Cuban Freedom Fighters' efforts to free Cuba from Castro and Communism, fueled by the financial implications of the arms and drug trade flow through the Caribbean basin and the international terrorist plans for Tampa's major military commands, all add to the rough and tumble life beneath the shiny veneer of palm trees and mimosas. Flash of Emerald is the first of a series of South Florida's Harry Stoner Suncoast Thrillers that feature the lush settings and diverse cultural backgrounds for action, romance and adventure on Florida's Suncoast.