Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Amazon Barnes & Noble.com Carl T. Smith Official Website Category:  Mystery/Suspense Publisher: River City Publishing ISBN-10:  1579660657 Type: Fiction Pages: 416 Copyright: March, 2005 ISBN-13: 9781579660659 Sam Larkin--former merchant marine and environmental officer in Louisiana--is unjustly sent to prison. Released under mysterious circumstances, Larkin moves to Covington, South Carolina, to begin a new, peaceful life. His newfound isolation is shattered when undercover federal agent Karen Chaney comes to town as part of a drug sting operation. Together they face an entrenched society willing to look the other way when crime pays and a group of high-profile conspirators ready to kill to make sure it does.  Sam Larkin is an enigma. A high school dropout, he joined the Merchant Marine, later earned a college degree in biology and worked as an environmental officer in Louisiana until he was unjustly sent to prison by Judge Thornton Hunnycut, who has eyes on the United States Senate. Released under extraordinary circumstances after serving four years of a fifteen-year sentence, Larkin moved to Covington, South Carolina, to begin a new life teaching school and painting. He has set on a path of non-involvement and a search for peace, which is shattered when knowledge of a conspiracy of major proportions falls to him. Despite efforts to ignore it, he is ultimately drawn in. Karen Chaney, working undercover for the federal government, learns of Larkin’s past and seeks to make him an ally in her investigation. Amidst a set of circumstances that include a questionable drowning, a corrupt school superintendent, two children whose lives are put in danger by an innocent discovery, a scandal involving bankers, lawyers, doctors and a law enforcement officer, a major conspiracy is exposed. During the course of the investigation, an improbable and impossible relationship develops between Karen Chaney and Larkin. Driven by passions, fears and internal conflict, Smith’s characters will pose a number of personal questions for the reader.

Relevant to Today's Times
This book directly addresses the issues we're confronting today with Enron and the mutual fund crises. Why would wealthy, successful people jeopardize their lives and security for money?
For those of us who live in fundamentally urban centers, this book provides a lovely depiction of the low country. It's as if it were a travelogue merged with a highly topical thriller.

Some Insights to Greed
This novel provided insights to the underworld of crime and greed that a typical, normal person would not suspect or question. School boards, bankers, attorneys - all supposedly solid citizens and pillars in society and the community. Apparently it really happens. My eyes have been opened to the greed the past year or two. This work really lays it on the line in a fast moving, action packed development of characters and plot to the point I could not put the book aside.If you like action, character studies, a little sex and underworld activity related to smuggeling, this is your book to read and enjoy.

Lowcountry Boil
Carl T. Smith's LOWCOUNTRY BOIL is much hotter than the two-hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit that gets water to steaming. This story steams from word one of the prologue to the last word of the epilogue. The protagonist, Sam Larkin, is an enigma, maybe a bad guy-maybe a good guy. I'm not going to give this complex story away, but I will tell that it's populated with a Southern town full of crooked citizens. There's corruption, conspiracy and murder. Add a vast drug conspiracy insanity, infidelity, murder, suicide, heroism and hot women and you have a roiling boil. Read LOWCOUNTRY BOIL . You won't be sorry