Cargo of Coffins » (Unabridged)

With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 230 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most acclaimed and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and '40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard.

He was the last man Lars Marlin had expected to see in Rio de Janeiro— and it took all of his willpower not to slay him on the spot.

Paco Corvino was a smooth-talking and slippery con man, a contraband runner, and escaped convict . . . not to mention murderer. He also was the man responsible for changing Captain Lars Marlin into Convict 3827645 of the penal colony in French Guiana known as Devil's Island— a prison from which he had only just escaped.

An unstoppable whirlwind of events brings Paco on board as the debonair chief steward of a luxury oceangoing yacht with an heiress and her rich friends as passengers. At the helm is skipper Lars Marlin. No one else knows that Paco and Lars are bitter rivals with an old score to settle, or that the voyage will be their final showdown upon the high seas.

Publishers Weekly

Two escaped convicts, Paco Corvino and Lars Marlin, face off in Hubbard's fast-paced high seas action yarn, first published in the November 1937 issue of Argosy. Some years after Corvino and Marlin independently broke out of French Guiana's Devil's Island, the men meet by chance in Rio de Janeiro, where the debonair Corvino works as the steward of the Valiant, a luxury yacht due to set sail. Corvino persuades the Valiant 's captain to hire Marlin, who's an experienced skipper, as part of the crew, unaware that Marlin blames his hellish stint on Devil's Island on his fellow escapee. Itching to take Corvino out with his trusty .38, Marlin must bide his time as the equally dangerous Corvino fingers his knife. Contraband cargo (heroin) and the yacht owner's beautiful daughter add spice to this taut pulp melodrama. (July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.