In 1974, Char Blackfox heads to Florida in to rebuild a life shattered by the war in Viet Nam.
He’s a Seminole Indian and former Green Beret who leaves the army and moves to Tampa Bay with the vain hope of a new beginning.
He gets a job, meets a beautiful woman and life seems to finally be going his way; until reality smacks him in the face. He throws in with the wrong crowd; a small time Irish-American hoodlum, a corrupt cop and an exiled Mafia Capo and his life spirals out of control.
In 2004, a combat hardened Force Recon Marine is released from active duty and returns to Florida to find his estranged father; a guy no one can find but everyone is looking for.
I am 54 years young and originally from Newington, CT. I went to undergraduate school at Northeastern University in Boston and have an MBA from the University of Phoenix in Technology Management. I spent a good amount of time in the military; first as an enlisted Marine in the Marine Reserve, then about ten years on active duty as an officer in the Military Police Corps of the U.S. Army and I finished out my career in the Army Reserve. During that time, I travelled a lot of the world, picked up Spanish, as the Army sent me to language school and managed to have a lot of fun while managing to avoid combat. While most sane people look at the being shot at as merely a life threatening situation, those in the military look at it as an opportunity for career advancement. As a combat tested careerist, I was an abject failure as I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. Meaning wherever I happened to be, peace was breaking out like mad. I was supposed to jump into Omar Torrejo Airport with the Rangers during Operation Just Cause, but instead I went on to the MP Officer Advance Course. The invasion took place in December of 89, as I drove home to Connecticut for Christmas break members of my former unit parachuted into glory. Later, as I sat in Panama enjoying the new era of peace and prosperity, Operation Desert Storm took place. My luck finally caught up with me and I spent part of a tour in Iraq. Other than a couple of nights of rocket fire, the period in Iraq was relatively peaceful. I got out of the military and eventually gravitated to the IT Field. I am currently an IT Architect for a healthcare company. I live in Seminole Florida with the love of my life, Suzanne and we got married on Oct 4th of this year. BOOK BLURB: I published Tampa Star late last year and it is my first book. It’s the story of a father and son that’s told in two parts. The first part of the book starts in the early seventies in the aftermath of the Viet Nam War. The father, Char, is a Seminole Indian and former Green Beret who is wounded by a dead guerrilla in the aftermath of a firefight. He is subsequently evacuated and discharged with a bum leg. Char moves to the Florida Gulf Coast, gets a job, meets a girl and life seems to be going his way, until he falls in with the wrong crowd and things spiral out of control from there. The second part of the book picks up in two thousand and four when the son, a former Recon Marine Officer, is discharged and travels to Florida in search of his father. The story has a host of villains you will love to hate, including a corrupt cop, a Mafia Capo and a Russian ex-CIA interrogator. I think the story has a lot to offer as the characters are richly drawn and are believable. I takes place in and around Florida and is written in the “Florida Glare” style of authors like Elmore Leonard and Laurence Shames. It has the same style of witty, realistic and somewhat caustic dialog that they are known to employ.
Tim O’Neil is a new and exciting name in techno-thrillerdom, but his books could also be branded as techno-nautical-caper thrillers. I like all these genres, and I’m happy to report that Tampa Star not only met, but blew away all my expectations. The guy really knows how to tell a story--and a joke (it's like they never stop), to grab the reader and not let go. His lovable bad boy characters hit the page running, moving fast and living hard. They hang out in trailer parks, RVs, strip clubs, boat basins. Shootouts abound, and these guys don’t just pack heat, they schlep military ordnance, scaled to the size of the job. One reviewer here was reminded of ‘30s and '40s film noir and ‘50s pulp fiction. O’Neil’s gritty, witty anti-heroes (plus the strippers and the wiseguys et al) also invite comparison to those of Elmore Leonard, Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger series and Richard Stark’s (Donald Westlake) Parker series. If you like any of those writers, it’s a safe bet you’ll love Tim O’Neil and Tampa Star.
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