Praise for GTLA

...[Charles Locks] has created a rich cast of characters who celebrate life and death as only the islanders can. Through his own personal experience as a restaurateur and sailboat aficionado in the Caribbean, Locks combines hilarity with romance to balance out the somberness of this well-told mystery.

--Debra Kiefat http://www.armchairinterviews.com/reviews/greater_trouble


“Captain Brian narrates in the manner of a Philip Marlowe character…the plot ambles along through the first half of the book; much in the easy-going way islanders greet a new day. But as time passes, and the festivities in Flamingo Bay warm up toward evening, so does the plot, until it’s a page-turning race to the finish. But by then the reader realizes it isn’t so much how the story ends, as the larger-than-life journey of getting there; a concept those island denizens seem to have figured out.”
—Vincent Wyckoff, Minneapolis Observer Quarterly

“This debut mystery delivers more than a clever title…in the end, justice is meted out, but the mystery element is not the book’s strength. Instead, it’s the collection of eccentric characters and madcap happenings. St. Judas may be a kind of paradise, but it’s also a hideout for refugees from the mainland, eccentrics who bask in the hot sun of the island’s chaos. Locks, through Captain Brian, draws a vivid picture in intelligent and finished prose. Immature, perhaps, but no dummy, Captain Brian is a saltwater philosopher who comes to know that there’s more to life than paradise.
—Marx Swanholm, Minneapolis Star Tribune

"...[a] collection of eccentric characters and madcap happenings...Locks, through Captain Brian, draws a vivid picture in intelligent, finished prose."

— Minneapolis Star Tribune

"...a page-turning race to the finish..."

— Minneapolis Observer Quarterly

"Charles Locks gives readers a reason to come out of the cold with his mystery novel Greater Trouble in the Lesser Antilles."

— The Villager

“Charles Locks’ smart, clean prose sails through the shark-filled waters of paradise and sinks more than a few whodunit clichés along the way.”

—Chuck Logan, author of Homefront

“Locks takes the blue, blue waters of the Caribbean, adds murder and romance, then mixes it to a froth. A killer of a drink.”

—Mary Logue, poet, and author of Poison Heart