Almost immediately, misfortune strikes. The Family Dunne springs a leak, one that, luckily, Uncle Jake is able to quickly patch. Mending the faulty hose, however, is not the end of catastrophe. Adversity plagues The Family Dunne like some malevolent fate.

Sail is fun to read, almost funny to read. Although chock-a-block with clichés— - an unexpected storm, a shark attack, a snake attack, a failed tracking device, an uninhabited island, a message in a bottle, a double cross - Sail is entertaining, fast-paced thriller fare.

Rather than a perfect book for the beach, Sail is perfect for a train ride. Occasionally, the reader is bound to pause after some telegraphed crisis and chuckle to the authors: "Gentlemen, this latest complication is just too hackneyed to be believable." On a train ride this would be an opportune moment to admire the scenery outside the window before returning to the book.

The reader will return to the book because it is a page-turner in which a murderer, a hired killer, a determined DEA agent and a femme-fatale are - dare I risk a cliché? - snarled in a web woven by an avaricious interest in Katherine’s millions should she and her children die at sea.

I couldn’t help feeling that the authors were writing tongue-in-cheek to some degree, especially when I read lines similar to the following. Katherine is treading water in the Caribbean, fearing the possible horror of all her family being dead, with this thought in her head: "I couldn’t fathom the thought."

And the banter among the Dunne family as they struggle to survive is also far too light for the situation. At one point, while paddling laboriously in an inflatable raft, Carrie Dunne quips, "Keep paddling, my hearties." I’m not even sure the piratical allusion is appropriate.

Nevertheless, Sail is fun to read. It tickles one’s fancy.