THE DEADLY QUIET SEA
RON LAUGHLIN
About the author - Ron Laughlin (just a little bit) and how he came to write this novel
After ten years with the Ohio Division of Wildlife retiring as the Law Enforcement Supervisor of southwestern Ohio Ron headed south to the Florida Keys to become a full time writer. He had been writing for outdoor magazines for several years, created two radio shows and produced an outdoor television show.
The year was 1970 when he stopped at Holiday Isle Resort in Islamorada and in days was helping make an underwater movie on a treasure wreck found offshore. He soon became the dockmaster of the big game fishing marina there and worked nights at the Tiki Bar.
Several of the locals he became friends with were retired military.
Through the 70’s and 80’s was the time when marijuana smuggling really began. First just as a trickle with small boats and planes loaded from Jamaica mostly handled upon arrival by university students. Then it wasn’t long the small dealers and importers were taken over by the Cuban Mafia in south Florida and small boats and planes turned to freighters and DC-3’s.
The Florida Keys and south Florida was awash with marijuana smugglers importing from Jamaica then from Columbia which brought in the more violent Columbia mafia who took over a big chunk of the business and began the cocaine smuggling in earnest. Gang wars broke out in the streets.
Ron was there in the middle of this world while he fished, dived and sailed throughout the Caribbean writing about it. He knew many of the people involved in the smuggling trade as he would meet them at the bars and at various ports he visited in the Bahamas, Jamaica,
Mexico and throughout the Keys.
These twenty years he spent in the Caribbean is the basis for “the Deadly Quiet Sea” his first novel of that period of time but not to be his last. The story is fiction but the boat trip through the Keys and the islands of the Bahamas is based upon actual memories. Sailing through the Bahamas was one of Ron’s favorite times of his adventuresome lifestyle.
He has many more stories to tell……………some fact……some fiction…….perhaps even a true life adventure of the modern day pirates of the Caribbean set in the 70’s and 80’s one of these days?
After ten years with the Ohio Division of Wildlife retiring as the Law Enforcement Supervisor of southwestern Ohio Ron headed south to the Florida Keys to become a full time writer. He had been writing for outdoor magazines for several years, created two radio shows and produced an outdoor television show.
The year was 1970 when he stopped at Holiday Isle Resort in Islamorada and in days was helping make an underwater movie on a treasure wreck found offshore. He soon became the dockmaster of the big game fishing marina there and worked nights at the Tiki Bar.
Several of the locals he became friends with were retired military.
Through the 70’s and 80’s was the time when marijuana smuggling really began. First just as a trickle with small boats and planes loaded from Jamaica mostly handled upon arrival by university students. Then it wasn’t long the small dealers and importers were taken over by the Cuban Mafia in south Florida and small boats and planes turned to freighters and DC-3’s.
The Florida Keys and south Florida was awash with marijuana smugglers importing from Jamaica then from Columbia which brought in the more violent Columbia mafia who took over a big chunk of the business and began the cocaine smuggling in earnest. Gang wars broke out in the streets.
Ron was there in the middle of this world while he fished, dived and sailed throughout the Caribbean writing about it. He knew many of the people involved in the smuggling trade as he would meet them at the bars and at various ports he visited in the Bahamas, Jamaica,
Mexico and throughout the Keys.
These twenty years he spent in the Caribbean is the basis for “the Deadly Quiet Sea” his first novel of that period of time but not to be his last. The story is fiction but the boat trip through the Keys and the islands of the Bahamas is based upon actual memories. Sailing through the Bahamas was one of Ron’s favorite times of his adventuresome lifestyle.
He has many more stories to tell……………some fact……some fiction…….perhaps even a true life adventure of the modern day pirates of the Caribbean set in the 70’s and 80’s one of these days?
the Exumas
Andros Island
Treasure Island
