By my fourth novel I was ready to leave the Keys setting and try my hand at Miami. I’d lived in Miami for nearly twenty years and I’d always found the city’s history fascinating. In my research before starting the novel, I read several histories of the early days of Miami and was seized by the photographs from that time of the Miami river. It was a lazy stream that meandered through the center of the city and was shaded by mossy oaks. A beautiful river, so unlike the straight and sludge-filled thing today that is called the Miami River.

I spoke to the city archaeologist about the river and he invited me along on a dig that he was conducting of a historical site along the banks of the river. I was absolutely fascinated by this historian’s vision of the old Miami and tried as much I as I could to evoke that time a hundred years ago in this novel.

I’ve always liked treasure stories so I tried to use some of the aspects of such wonderful stories from my youth as Treasure Island. There is missing gold, a sunken ship that has been lost, a treasure map and a bunch of very bad pirate like guys who want to keep the hero from discovering the gold.