THE JUDAS SHIP

December 1941, some two hundred miles off the Brazilian coastline. A time of war at sea and sudden death, of prowling U-boats and Kriegsmarine surface raiders. A time of nerve-rending anticipation for the crew of the British merchantman 'Maya Star' with its cargo of explosives ... until the anticipation turns to horrific actuality when a German naval shell blasts her radio room and chief operator into a superheated shambles. Minutes later and the 'Maya Star' is running blind, a flaming time-bomb clawing to escape with most of her crew already dead or dying.Yet that is only the prelude to the real nightmare as the survivors fight to save their crippled ship, limping towards the temporary shelter offered by an uninhabited region of the Amazon Basin: a rain forest stretching as far as the eye can see; a sluggish, uncharted river with the only sign of life in the splash and sudden swirl of a comatose reptilian. ... or is it? For on board the 'Maya Star' there grows a vague unease, a suspicion that somebody, or something, is watching and waiting - until, finally, it becomes terrifyingly clear that their sanctuary has become a merciless trap. That they have ventured from the frying pan into a fire as hot as any they had endured in their battle at sea ...Dramatic, engrossing, brilliantly entertaining; written in the vein of his run-away best-seller A FLOCK OF SHIPS, this is Brian Callison at his blood and thunder best." ... a whizzer ... Callison's tightest show since A SHIP IS DYING." Kirkus Reviews.