I have read Stuart Woods‘ novels for many years. He publishes three new books a year, rotating major characters and themes. Thirty-nine of his books have made the New York Times fiction best-seller list.
His last few, however, have focused upon Stone Barrington. Barrington is a former cop, and an attorney of counsel in a New York firm, who is also wealthy and a playboy. One lesson from his adventures is that money 
sometimes winds you up in some pretty difficult places.
Woods is a great writer, and his strength is dialogue among characters. In most cases, you feel as if you are standing with them, observing, reacting, and taking it all in. Rarely do the sexual escapades reach the level of what you would call salacious, but they do present just enough to pique your interest. Surprisingly, only two of the books have been made into television mini-series.
The newest book is called Cut and Thrust (New York: Putnam, 2014). This is a book set in the context of a political convention in Los Angeles, with most of the action at Barrington’s hotel, The Arrington, named after his ex-wife who was murdered in a previous book. In addition to Barrington, the other major characters are the outgoing U.S. President, Will Lee, and his wife, Katharine Lee, who is running for President. Barrington is dating her deputy campaign manager, Ann Keaton.
Frankly, I would love to fly on the airplanes that Barrington flies and travels on, and also, stay at The Arrington. I would not love to see the room service bill for all the breakfasts, lunches, dinners, late night buffets, and bar orders. My favorite book of his was called L.A. Dead, which you would have to find in garage sales.
If you have never heard of Stuart Woods, here is his biography from his web site (www.stuartwoods.com):
Stuart Woods was born in the small southern town of Manchester, Georgia and attended the local public schools, then graduated from the University of Georgia, with a BA in sociology. He doesn’t remember why.
After college, he spent a year in Atlanta and two months in basic training for what he calls “the draft-dodger program” of the Air National Guard. Then, in the autumn of 1960, he moved to New York, in search of a writing job. The magazines and newspapers weren’t hiring, so he got a job in a training program at an advertising agency, earning seventy dollars a week. “It is a measure of my value to the company,” he says, “that my secretary was earning eighty dollars a week.” He spent the whole of the nineteen-sixties in New York, with the exception of ten months, which he spent in Mannheim, Germany, at the request of John F. Kennedy. The Soviets had built the Berlin Wall, and Woods, along with a lot of other national guardsmen, was sent to Germany, “. . . to do God knows what,” as he puts it. What he did, he says, was ” . . . fly a two-and-a-half-ton truck up and down the autobahn.” He notes that the truck was all he ever flew in the Air Force.
At the end of the sixties, he moved to London and worked there for three years in various advertising agencies. In early 1973, he decided that the time had come for him to write the novel he had been thinking about since the age of ten. He moved to Ireland, where some friends found him a small flat in the stableyard of a castle in south County Galway, and he supported himself by working two days a week for a Dublin ad agency, while he worked on the novel. Then, about a hundred pages into the book, he discovered sailing, and “. . . everything went to hell. All I did was sail.”
After a couple of years of this his grandfather died, leaving him, “. . . just enough money to get into debt for a boat,” and he decided to compete in the 1976 Observer Singlehanded Transatlantic Race (OSTAR). Since his previous sailing experience consisted of, “. . . racing a ten-foot plywood dinghy on Sunday afternoons against small children, losing regularly,” he spent eighteen months learning more about sailing and celestial navigation while his new 30-foot yacht, a Ron Holland design called Golden Harp, was being built at a yard in Cork. He moved to a nearby gamekeeper’s cottage on a big estate, on the Owenboy River, above Cork Harbor, to be near the boatyard.
The race began at Plymouth England in June of ’76. He completed his passage to Newport, Rhode Island in forty-five days, finishing in the middle of the fleet, which was not bad since his boat was one of the smallest. How did he manage being entirely alone for six weeks at sea? “The company was good,” he says.
The next couple of years were spent in Georgia, writing two non-fiction books: Blue Water, Green Skipper was an account of his Irish experience and the transatlantic race, and A Romantic’s Guide to the Country Inns of Britain and Ireland, which was a travel book, done on a whim. He also did some more sailing. In August of 1979 he competed, on a friend’s yacht, in the tragic Fastnet Race of 1979, which was struck by a huge storm. Fifteen competitors and four observers lost their lives, but Stuart and his host crew finished in good order, with little damage. (The story of the ’79 Fastnet Race was told in the book, Fastnet Force 10, written by a fellow crewmember of Stuart, John Rousmaniere.) That October and November, he spent skippering his friend’s yacht back across the Atlantic, with a crew of six, calling at the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands and finishing at Antigua, in the Caribbean.
In the meantime, the British publisher of Blue Water, Green Skipper, had sold the American rights to W.W. Norton, a New York publishing house, who also contracted to publish his novel, on the basis of two hundred pages and an outline, for an advance of $7500. “I was out of excuses to not finish it, and I had taken their money, so I finally had to get to work.” He finished the book and it was published in March of 1981, eight years after he had begun it. The novel was called Chiefs.
Though only 20,000 copies were printed in hardback, the book achieved a large paperback sale and was made into a six-hour television drama for CBS-TV, starring Charlton Heston, at the head of an all-star cast that included Danny Glover, Billy Dee Williams and John Goodman. The 25th anniversary of Chiefs came in March, 2006, and W.W. Norton published a special commemorative replica edition of the hardcover first edition, which can still be ordered from any bookstore.
Chiefs established Woods as a novelist. The book won the Edgar Allan Poe prize from the Mystery Writers of America, and he was later nominated again for Palindrome. More recently he was awarded France’s Prix de Literature Policiere, for Imperfect Strangers. He has since been prolific, having published his fiftieth novel, Severe Clear in September 2012. Next summer, at a date to be determined, Paris Match will be released.
After publishing fifteen novels before appearing on the New York Times bestseller list, he has since had thirty-nine straight bestsellers on the the Times hardcover list.
He is a licensed, instrument-rated private pilot, with 3,400 hours total time, and he currently flies a Cessna Citation Mustang jet (see photo below,) and in September, 2013, moved up to the new Citation M-2, and his wife, Jeanmarie, who has recently earned her private pilot, instrument and multi-engine ratings, will train for the copilot’s seat in the new jet. Stuart sails on other peoples’ boats, owns a Hinckley T38 power boat (hinckleyyachts.com) and is a partner in a 85-foot 1935 Trumpy motor yacht,Enticer, (which can be seen atwww.woodenyachts.com and on the cover ofLoitering With Intent). The yacht has been recently restored to like-new condition.
Stuart Woods is no longer a born-again bachelor, having married the former Jeanmarie Cooper of Key West in January, 2013 and they live with a Labrador Retriever named Fred in Key West, Florida, on Mount Desert Island, in Maine, and, occasionally, in a New York City pied a terre. (Of a warm nature, he says he’s always looking for 70 degrees Fahrenheit.)
If this post inspires you to read Stuart Woods’ books, go back as far as you can, and just start reading. Many of the titles are available in paperback, and through secondary sellers available from Amazon.com.
Enjoy!
First Friday Book Synopsis 