In Search of Jason

About the Book

IN SEARCH OF JASON is the story of Jason Reilly, a lowly employee at B.

Pictures, a cut-rate New York City film production company, whose owner, Mr.

B. is a confidante of many curious characters inhabiting both sides of the

law. In the course of one of his many errands for Mr. B., Jason goes to hand

some papers to a diplomat at the United Nations and in the course of his

time there, misplaces a film script he was carrying.

From that loss, dire consequences arise, for the film for which the script

was written was to have been shot in the Caribbean, with the production

serving as cover for a drug-courier operation run by one of Mr. B.´s

less-than-legitimate pals, an underworld dynamo named Sicky.

In addition to his illegal interests, Sicky has entertained a lifelong

legitimate interest in some day becoming a major feature film producer.

Thus, the idea of someone like Jason not only endangering his profits, which

would be bad enough, but also imperiling his cinematic opportunity of a

lifetime is an outrage to which the only answer can be one of summary

execution!

Now, it´s one thing when you´re seeking to prove your innocence to a law

officer who, theoretically, is subject to some constraints, but when you´re

trying to explain yourself to a paranoid gunman who acknowledges no laws

save those in his own, options become more limited. Such is the case for

Jason.

So, after narrowly avoiding being murdered in his bed and getting run over

by a speeding car aimed at a pay phone booth he´s calling from, Jason makes

his escape from the city. He heads for the New Jersey Turnpike, Chesapeake

Bay, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, the Florida swamps, Miami and,

finally, the Caribbean´s blue carpet.

Along he way, he picks up a partner in crime - or perhaps innocence. Dr. Sam

Albert is a former 1960s college revolutionary, present-day psychiatrist and

off-hours bush pilot, whose set of wings Jason finds useful in Miami, when

the ship´s captain he´s hired to take him afloat begins to cause problems.

Later, while island-hopping in the Caribbean with Albert, Jason gets,

unwittingly, another partner in the form of Aringapu, a Central American

Indian whose ancestors, 500 years earlier, were either massacred or driven

off the very island where Sicky now proposes to set up his supreme shoot.

You wouldn´t expect Jason to come to earth practically right under Sicky´s

Ray-Bans. You´d think it would be the last place Aringapu would want to turn

up in, too. You´d think, above all, that the good Dr. Albert, skilled in

providing wise counsel and comfort, would look out for Jason´s interests and

fly him out at once. You´d be wrong on all counts, particularly on the last!

You might also expect, on this page, to find out how it all wraps up, but

this place is meant to stimulate your appetite, not satiate it. All that can

be said for now is that, in a curious and appropriate way, the punishment

fits the crime.

About the Author

Andrew Grover was born in New Jersey, graduated from Columbia University and attended the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. He has worked in the film industry as a location scout, as a journalist and as a researcher. He is currently an editor and reporter for a trade paper in New York City.