Second Season of the Marsha & Danny Jones Thrillers – The Preamble

Second Season of the Marsha & Danny Jones Thrillers – The Preamble

 THE SECOND SEASON

 

The Privateer Clause
Copyright 2010 – 2016 Ken Rossignol / Huggins Point Publishing
www.theprivateerclause.com

ken@theprivateerclause.com

 

MARSHA & DANNY JONES THRILLER
– THE SECOND SEASON –
PREAMBLE

Scene of the Crime of the Marsha & Danny Jones ThrillerIntroduction

This special season preview to the Second Season of the Marsha & Danny Jones Thrillers is presented as an opportunity for readers to ask questions of the cast of characters in the series and to make suggestions for ports, itineraries, plots and events that they would like to see included in the Second Season as the Sea Empress travels the world.

Marsha & Danny Jones hired on as security consultants for the Seven Seas Company on its flagship, the Sea Empress in 2008 and have been at sea ever since, with very few gaps of retreats to their shore-home located on a waterfront site on a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay.  While they love their pleasant home, complete with a new wine cellar, the two retired law enforcement officers – she from the U. S. Secret Service and he, a homicide detective with Prince Georges County, Maryland – the couple have fully embraced life at sea. Of course, having a suite on the ship complete with butler service makes it a treat even if Marsha did plug one room service waiter between the eyes one morning. He was bringing Eggs Benedict with a Glock hiding under the napkin on the tray. When he reached for the gun as he set down the tray, she polished him off.  Who knew breakfast could be so dangerous?

For this preamble, readers are invited to join in the comment section on this page of THE PRIVATEER CLAUSE website and provide questions and comments. The author, Ken Rossignol, as well as the characters, will attempt to answer questions about the First Season and listen to your ideas for the Second Season.

The first book in the SECOND SEASON – COMING SOON!

Marsha & Danny Jones are back on the high seas. DEADLY. DETERMINED. DANGEROUS. The Cure for the Common Cruise

The Cast of Characters:

Marsha Jones: retired Secret Service agent

Danny Jones: her husband and retired homicide cop

Kevin Clinton: President of Black & Perkins Security

Henry Boston: CEO of Seven Seas Company

Scotty O’Neill, Chief Engineer of the Sea Empress

Rahid Abrams (ret. Virginia State trooper) B & P agent

Larry & Clare Klear: owners of a Caribbean sailing charter catamaran

April Broccoli: professional cruiser, retired educator

Vito Broccoli: her husband, retired educator

Faustina Mayflower: opera singer and devoted cruiser

Ben Mayflower: her husband and a pilot

Captain Johnny Black and new wife Felicia

Sen. Emily Fountain: U.S. Senator from Oregon

Sen. Lyndon Langdon (Wyoming, nominee for the United States Supreme Court)

Leopold Bryan (the president’s brother and an actor)

Lola Bryan (Leopold’s wife)

President of the United States John Hanson Bryan

Dr. Ralph Russell, expert on the Bermuda Triangle

Author Bruce M. Caplan: expert on the Titanic

Esther Caplan: his wife

Oliver Ross: director of B & P training center in Maryland

Aunt Lulu: the cook at the Black & Perkins training center

Nodak B. Marshall: attorney at law, San Juan, P.R.

Ned Epstein: reporter for Associated News in the Dominican Republic

Mike Slesserman: counsel and chief of staff to President John Hanson Bryan

Aunt Gussie Binnix: seamstress for show performers and retired CIA agent

Jock O’Leary, author, and his girlfriend

Phyllis: current girlfriend of O’Leary

Longworth T. Channing, World Review Society member

Capt. Greco, Master of the Sea Empress

First Officer Stan Blythe

Cruise Director Ned Ledford

Activities Manager Gayle Storm

FBI CSI Vincent Marinna

San Juan FBI Agent in Charge Bart Masters

Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Brenda Garcia

Max Baldwin

Sandy Lane

Kai Wilson

Let’s get started:

Marsha: First I want to say that the impression some have had that my husband is a bit flighty and maybe even drifty is essentially correct; like in the scene in Follow Triangle where he starts daydreaming about the Bermuda Triangle really doesn’t take into account Danny’s full personality.

Danny: Hon, you sound like you agree with those “remarks”.

Marsha: Not at all, I was just trying to let people know that, deep down, you are a deep thinker and a deep dreamer and that both of those personality traits came to play in that sequence, as when the Sea Empress arrived in St. Thomas and all those disappeared ships and planes had reappeared out of thin air, it gave that special edition of our Marsha & Danny Jones Thrillers a bit of a fantasy air and isn’t that what taking a cruise and reading cruise thrillers is all about?

Danny: I see you spent some time ‘dreaming’ about what you would talk about for this show.

Marsha: Danny, I was just taking up for you with some of those less than stellar reviews on that episode of the First Season. I want to let readers know that you have real depth of character, that you are a deliberate and detailed thinker who works your way through each and every step of a crime, that you are so observant that you bring all that you take in, all that you write in your notebook, all that you photograph into your visual memory, a memory that is quite remarkable and maybe science ought to study you – you put it all together and have a very high closing rate on your investigations as a result.

Danny: Well, if you put it that way, I guess that reader who didn’t like my dreaming during the Bermuda Triangle sequence just didn’t “get me”.

I can add this wonderful quote about dreams to this show. I used to keep it written on a folded up piece of paper in my wallet but after a while I couldn’t read the creases, so I memorized it.

Here goes:

“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”  – T. E. Lawrence

Marsha: Oh my, that explains a lot!

Danny: Now that we have opened this show with a drilling down on me, a cliché that sounds noisy, and reminds me I have to go to that great dentist in Lexington Park and get my crown replaced, but ‘at the end of the day’ – thought I would get in another one that you hear once a minute on Fox News – Marsha, you really are the star of this show and due to your perseverance we are still alive, due to your skills and leadership, we have saved many lives and sent many a bad guy to reserved seats in the Hell they deserve. I want everyone here to know that I applaud this wonderful woman I am married to and that I sleep with one eye open.

Marsha: Why does the author give you the corny laugh lines?

Danny: I have to have something going for me, you got the beauty and the brains.

Nodak B. Marshall: I just want to mention to everyone that I have left business cards under your seats here in the Sea Empress theater and you can redeem the card for a free Frappuccino at the ship’s café. As a former Assistant U. S. Attorney General in the Virgin Island and in Delaware, I also am licensed to practice law in Va., Md. Del and Puerto Rico but I won’t go to any courtroom in the Virgin Islands as there are a number of hoods looking for me after I locked them up for failing to pay child support.

Marsha: Was it really a good idea when they allowed lawyers to start advertising?

Nodak B. Marshall: Not a bad idea at all, I am looking at getting a walk-on part on ‘Better Call Saul’, he’s my kind of lawyer.

Ben Mayflower: We have one question here from a reader who wants to know if I died when my plane crashed in the Bahamas as she could never find out in the rest of the First Season where my body or the plane wreckage was ever discovered. She says that she notes that my wife, Faustina, has never hooked up with someone new but she didn’t seem all that distressed at my disappearance.

Well, I can tell you that Faustina has been devastated to have me missing and not know what happened to me, and it’s a good thing she doesn’t know what kinda of life I have been leading on my almost deserted island. These Carib Indians who live on the island that I am trapped on carry out a lot of raids on other islands and bring back things I really like, I can get Vodka for my ice drinks, yes, they even have a generator and bring in gasoline from some place they raid. They won’t let me go with them as they think I am a God-Man due to my infinite wisdom. My engineering background came in handy and I showed the Indians how to drill a well for fresh water and then make a pump work, they had a pump in their collection of stolen loot from other islands.

Ben: Okay, we have a question that asks why the Indians didn’t harm me.

The answer to that is that other nearby Indian populations left our island alone due to our Indians having this nasty little habit of eating human flesh. Yes, I am ashamed to say that my little buddies sometimes venture off into the dark side and have some pretty unique stews and roasts. I can usually tell from the quirky grins on their faces when they come back from their raids. They tried to talk me into trying it and I told them that Gods must not ever eat the flesh of man or that God will turn to stone.  Well, they bought that and so I stick to rabbits and muskrats.  I really like the muskrat nuggets that you dig out of the brains of those critters once they are roasted really well.

Marsha: Thanks, Ben, and we all wondered how you were, if you survived the plane crash and, believe it or not, Captain Johnny Black even went out looking for you for a month.

Ben: Well, don’t tell anyone I’m alive, as it won’t be long and Faustina can have me declared dead and she can collect a life insurance policy for $100,000 and the IRS will stop trying to collect my back taxes.  I have to say, my little buddies in the tribe are working at stealing a cell phone tower and batteries that run it and pretty soon I’ll be pinging again.

Faustina: I am astounded, to say the least, here, all along, I have been worried about you and all the while, you were gallivanting around some island with a bunch of naked cannibals and drinking Vodka.

Ben: I didn’t always have Vodka, sometimes the Indians would bring me a case of that Carib beer, they pick it up all the time when I explained to them that the beer was named after them.  They take a great deal of pride in having the paleface God drink too much firewater named after their tribe.

Captain Johnny Black: I would like to dive right in here. I want to point out that when Obama hooked up with the Castro boys, all the deals for business are going to FOB’s (Friends of Barack) and no one else. At least in Return of the Sea Empress when that bumbling Leopold Bryan thawed out relations with the Commie Castro Brothers, the Cuban people got freedom and small business folks like me were given a chance to service the onslaught of tourism. I was able to take equipment over and run dive tours but, as you might remember, that was the end of my dear wife when she encountered a green moray eel.  But the way Obama did it in real-time life instead of in the Marsha & Danny Jones Thrillers, all the money is going to Friends of Barack and the Cuban people are still communist slaves.  I like fiction history a lot better and I came out of all this with a new wife and – she’s a keeper – I only release sharks.

What I really wanted to point out here, is that when Ben’s plane went missing, the Coast Guard and the Bahamian officials searched a massive area of sea and much of the island chain looking for wreckage. When they ended their effort, Black & Perkins hired a plane to fly me to Freeport and chartered a boat for me to use for a month. Felicia and I checked every remote island within 50 miles of the last radar ping from Ben’s GPS in his plane. There was no way to mount a better search and perhaps we now know he just might have been hiding from us all the time since he set himself up as a 21st Century King of the Pirates in the Bahamas.

Leopold Bryan: Hark! Has my good name been slandered? I am the star of stage, screen and the Sea Empress! How dare that rogue banana boat captain call me ‘bumbling’, everyone thought I did an admirable job of backing down that ruthless cutthroat dictator Castro.

Marsha: Cool your jets, Leopold, I’m sure Capt. Johnny didn’t mean to say you fouled up that task, perhaps he meant some of the other shenanigans we have all seen you pull.

Leopold Bryan: In that case, dear Marsha, I shall accept your clarification as no one shall be allowed to tarnish one of my crowning achievements!

Vito Broccoli: Can I get a word in edgewise here? I just want to say that I had been on a lot of cruises over the years before our first one on the Sea Empress and that trip started off just like all the rest. Muster drill, chair hogs and pushy old ladies in the elevator always jabbing me in the ribs when they wanted me to push a button for their deck. Look, I’m a retired educator, I am used to people with bad manners or even no manners, but some of those old coots really need a good pow, right in the kisser!

April Broccoli: Vito! People are watching this at home, children are listening to you, maybe even our grandchildren and you’re advocating smacking grandmothers! I am shocked.

Vito: Okay, maybe I got a little excited, it was the thought of Ben living on a private island like a King with a band of Pirate cannibals catering to his every whim and desire. Hey, Leopold, ya got any of those good Cubans left, I smoked the last one of that box you gave me.

Faustina: Oh, Leopold, dear. Do you think maybe the entertainment director will place me in the cast of your new show? I very much enjoyed the last one and when someone put it on YouTube, I had casting directors calling me for months. I even was placed at shows at the National Theater and Wolf Trap. I’m not sure my husband, the illustrious Pirate King of the Cannibals, is going to leave his island and return to our home.

Ben: Dear, that was just to fulfill a fantasy, you know, I thought it was Fantasy Island and when the pygmy cannibal ran around my wrecked plane and hollered “De Plane, De Plane”, I thought I had to go along with the gag as the only way I would get off the island and back to your loving arms, my sweet.

Danny: Who was the wise guy who thought it was a good idea to actually find Ben again?

Henry Boston: Folks, we need to keep this moving, Ken Rossignol, the author of this series, is giving a talk on the Bermuda Triangle right now in the South Pacific Lounge and we can take a break from this cast reunion long enough to go listen to Ken, we will catch part of his talk if we hurry. Just keep a lid on Leopold and Ben or Ken will give whoever makes any commotion when we enter, some really bad joke lines in the next book.

Ben: Are you kidding me, what did I do to the guy, he made it look like I was dead when I was really captured by criminal cannibals and held for ransom.

Vito: So who was the idiot that paid your ransom?

Danny: Please folks, we only will be able to catch about five minutes of the Bermuda Triangle and if we don’t show up like we promised, Rossignol is going to blow up the ship again or even worse, hire those Eastern European women weightlifters again as the wait staff around the pool deck.

Vito: Ugh, not that!

Faustino: Must you men be so sexist, those women need jobs too, just like everyone else.

Jock O’Leary: I’m coming too, it’s just nice not be locked in my stateroom as a suspect while everyone hunts for the serial killer. Where is Max, anyway? And I have a complaint, how come dead guys are listed as in the cast, don’t tell me that jerk Channing came back to life?

Marsha: I will speak to you privately, Jock.

Aunt Gussie is back on board as the seamstress for the show cast, therefore, I doubt if we will see Max Baldwin again.

Henry: Follow me folks, and after the Bermuda Triangle, we’ll reconvene to finish our brain-storming session. The readers at home can email any questions about Season One or ideas for Season Two directly to Ken at his email address: ken@theprivateerclause.com or in the comments section at the bottom of this page.

Henry: For those just getting here, we have a Titanic talk too.  Watch both and then head back to the South Pacific Lounge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12 Comments on “Second Season of the Marsha & Danny Jones Thrillers – The Preamble

    • Mona;
      You are very kind to drop in on a holiday weekend. This preamble isn’t yet in print, though it will be the introduction to the next book and after completed, be part of the Audible version of book # 7. Thanks for attending today.
      Ken

    • Tarissa;
      Its been a few years since the Sea Empress has been in England and you are in luck as the itinerary for the next season includes the British Isles with stops in all three lands. There were some Brits on board in Beheaded, and they were a key part of the effort to thwart ISIS.
      Thanks for joining us for this meeting of cast and readers.
      Ken

  1. Hey Ken;
    My wife and I are hoping to take an Alaskan cruise in the next couple of years. How about a little preview for us? Perhaps a little intrigue starting on the ship, and then moving aboard the Yukon train excursion. Just how many added thrills would be extracted by a grizzly bear chase while Danny and Marsha race their dog team to save the day. I can only hope our real life cruise would be as exciting…

    • Larry;
      You sure have joined in on the spirit of the Seven Seas Company and all of the cast and crew of the Sea Empress. Our mission is to save you from the belly flop contests and make sure the ice cream machines function and don’t run out. Trains have long connected the ocean travel by ship, as the Panama Canal had a railroad long before the Canal was built and it still runs. On the Alaska Railroad, there are longer journeys than at Panama, which just goes 50 miles.
      Ken

      Larry;
      The last time I spent a lot of time on shore, my wife was killed when she came face to face with a green moray eel during a dive tour in Cuba. I would hate to lose my new wife to a cold-hearted bear in Alaska.
      Capt. Johnny Black

  2. A trip to the AnArtic with a huge storm would be one idea, or off the “Horn” of Africa into pirate waters. A innocent trip into the Yellow Sea, between China and Korea , of the Korean Straights between S. Korea and Japan or the Sea of Japan adjacent to the eastern side of N & S Korea. While on board is a highly secret international, UN sponsored, intelligence gathering team monitors nuclear weapons testing and deployment, sniffing the air, specially improved covert RADAR antenna on the ship and via small hand launched drones that are expendable, self destroying on completion of their mission, could deployed. All while operating with N Korean Midget and diesel powered submarines shadowing with secret orders to destroy the ship. At the same time other super secret N Korean Special Operations forces are deployed to stop by any means available the ships mission, regardless of possible international/world reaction! Will WWIII start, or Nuclear devastation be un-leased on the world???

    A norther passage from Alaska to England during a sudden rapid deployment of the entire Northern Fleet of the Russian Navy in an attempt to recover a badly hurt and possibly sinking US Nuclear Missal submarine while British and US submarines, Air Forces of those nations and surface ships of all of northern NATO rapidly deploy from their bases to assist and defend the ship while your cruise ship is along side tied up to the submarine rendering assistance of the laws of the sea and protecting against foreign hostile seizure by the Russian Navy. Will they seize it, or sink both ships to later attempt a retrieval of it from the bottom of the sea? Of will the Ship’s captains and our ever present Security Experts devise a new and untested way to teather the disabled sub submerged and behind the cruise ship as it continues on it’s way? Stay tuned to find out!

    A cruise into the Java Sea/Indonesia an a unexpected volcanic eruption down in area (either creating a new island as Krakatoa did) responding to a call for aide providing food, medical facilities and especially generating fresh water for the area while the ships passengers and crew go on limited rations and “Water Hours”.

    • The General:
      The only thing you left out was a movie production crew (we did have the Boardwalk Empire on board for one cruise) rushing aboard at Tenerife and loading a mysterious cargo into the hold, which we might find out later is a large mammal which had been sedated. Now he wakes up for the midnight buffet. Thanks, Ken

      General:
      I salute you, sir, from one veteran and retired law officer to another.
      Danny

  3. I’m really looking forward to this! I think the variety of destinations/itineraries is where the greatest possibilities lie. Local color, history and things visitors actually encounter when visiting are things that will really pique the interest of readers. I would love to read about visits to the U.K., Scandinavia, Africa, and the South Pacific. Don’t forget to include lots of everyday things of “ordinary” ship-board life.

    • Ted;
      The Captain is preparing carefully for when we sail into the Mediterranean and pass thru the Suez and out to the Indian Ocean. We’ll have more updates on the current security status in coming weeks, but Marsha & Danny says that a special Black & Perkins ship, the Resolute, is permanently stationed in that region along with the international navies posted to blast Somali pirates to their ultimate reward. Thanks for joining us and I’ll see you at the Windjammer.
      Ken

  4. I am not able to travel a lot, so I really enjoy the opportunity to get around through your books. As I see in the comments here, others do as well. Thus, I have no particular suggestions, just a request to keep them up and thank you for your efforts. An aside: I luve on the Chesapeake Bay and enjoy your historical information, but I enjoy these books much more!

    • Davy; your comments are deeply appreciated. Let me know if you would like to listen to any of the books in Audible, as I would like to thank you for taking the time to note your remarks here. A new book in the Marsha & Danny Thrillers is the next one on the taxiway. – Ken

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