Are you an expat, or thinking of becoming an expat? Then Between Oceans – Crooks, Creeps, and Crazies on the Isthmus is a must-read. This is the third book in the Maya Warwick series and picks up where Between Volcanoes leaves off. In her inimitable style, Roan St. John exposes the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic, but always entertaining life of expats in the last undiscovered paradise called Malpaís.

Maya Warwick is enjoying her new life in Aix-en-Provence when she finds the calling card of William Balthazar Hastings stuck in the gate to her farm. A Washington D.C. phone number makes her suspect Hastings is with the CIA.

After dinner with friends, Hastings accosts her and suggests they have a drink in a bistro, during which he explains how the CIA wants her to return to Malpaís to gather intel on certain expats who moved there in the last two years. She is adamant that she will not go back to the country where her husband was murdered. Hastings reveals that the CIA has evidence suggesting she was instrumental in her husband’s demise and unless she cooperates, they will report her to the insurance company who paid out a large sum on her deceased husband. Reluctantly, she agrees to their terms. 

As a cover, the CIA created a magazine called Neotrópica and gave her the title of senior editor.  To gather material for the magazine, Maya ingratiates herself into the expat community, only to discover the trials and tribulations — including murder, theft, fraud and assault — they experience after moving to this third-world backwater country, where they are viewed as moving targets. The magazine is nothing but a smokescreen for the CIA’s agenda to root out members of the cartel responsible for killing her husband and flooding the U.S with cocaine. 

Cleverly laced with true anecdotes and loosely disguised real-life characters, St. John’s book exposes the paradise that some expats discover after it’s too late.  

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About the author

Roan St. John currently divides her time between the mountains of Costa Rica and Guatemala. After a high-profile career in the entertainment business, and many exciting projects as an entrepreneur, she is happily enjoying life on the isthmus where she is working on the sequel to Between Oceans.