Nasty drug cartel members, dirty cops and even terrorists who specialize in manufacturing deadly explosives stand in the way of The Specialist, a retired United States Special Forces operator and former federal agent who is on a daring life-or-death rescue mission to extract a corrupt banker from the hands of kidnappers in Costa Rica.

UPDATE: This article has been amended to reflect correct authorship of the book mentioned herein.

The Specialist: The Costa Rica Job is a thriller authored by Charles Peterson Sheppard, whose brother Phillip is a fan favorite and finalist on the hit reality television series “Survivor.”  The book draws inspiration from Phillip’s real-life experiences in law enforcement. The main character in The Specialist is based on Mr. Sheppard himself. Here’s a description of the book from a 2013 press release:

[The Specialist] is a new book showcasing Phillip Sheppard punching the lights out of bad guys foolish enough to get in his way. The Specialist combines forces with a hard-fisted Israeli secret agent, squashing drug dealers, street thugs and bad cops with equal prejudice. He also manages to thwart a terrorist bomber and solve a high-stakes kidnapping case along the way. In fact, he is a no-nonsense, martial arts champion with titanium fists and lightning fast reflexes. Sheppard’s new role and the sheer energy of the tense plot has won over readers and left them clamoring for more. The book has quickly become a ‘must own’ among fans of the reality television show.

Mr. Sheppard has kindly provided The Costa Rica Star with a copy of his book, and he is allowing us to publish two excerpts. Here is the first excerpt as a teaser; we will run the second excerpt in a future article. If you can’t wait for the second excerpt, you can head to Amazon and purchase your own copy of The Specialist.

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Mimi Sabo’s accent was thick, but her English was more than passable. She looked young, right out of college, but more refined than American girls of the same age. She was beautiful and worldly, a rich foreign woman, and already sophisticated. I detected her dialect as not fully Costa Rican, at least not anymore. She had been educated, but probably not in her home country. Most of the Costa Rican public universities were technically oriented and most of the private schools focused on the biological sciences and medicine; she didn’t come across as either type.

I really didn’t buy Mimi Sabo’s narrative, not completely, not in my Specialist gut. There was just something fishy about it. Her story seemed tragic enough but slightly rehearsed, too. It only needed a gung-ho hero to save the day. I felt ill-suited for that role, especially if she was holding something back. I was prepared to decline the job until she placed a twenty-five-thousand dollar cashier’s check on the edge of my desk.

That certainly re-ignited my interest.

It also made for good drama, so I decided to up the ante. “Young lady I hope you know, for me that’s barely an advance…” She looked stunned. I wish I could have seen the unflinching look on my own face. It had to be classic to shake her up the way it did.

“All that money is just an advance? Just a down payment?”

“Well, given the logistics involved, the inherent dangers to life and limb, the overall risk, developing contacts, securing safe lines of communication, the cost of payoffs and bribes, not to mention my personal expenses… yeah, what’s on the table right now won’t cut it.”

“I, well, I…that is, um… I assumed that would be enough.”

“It’s not. That check will only get me standing on a helicopter landing pad next to a jungle path in Costa Rica —by myself— hopefully without being detained by some minister of public security, or worse, the United States military. One man trekking through that jungle with a .32 Tomcat pistol tucked between his butt-cheeks will not get it done.”

I pointed out to her that the commercial flights were simply out of the question for the type of activity she wanted performed.

“Homeland Security, the U.S. Air Force, Customs, the drug cartels, they all keep tabs on who’s flying in and out of these small Central American countries. The four international airports and the smaller domestic ones are completely out of the question. Even the little private landing strips report unusual activity, unless there’s quiet money paid up front. There’s no getting around it. I learned that the hard way, believe me. It’s a lesson I don’t need repeated.”

“Look, Miss Sabo this is not a shake down, it’s reality. Wake up. I didn’t fl y twenty-five hundred miles to ask you for work. You flew here. I’m a businessman. I work for the wealthy because that is where the money is, not because I like them, necessarily. Criminals target the rich for the same reason. If you don’t want my services and you can find someone else who’ll listen to your story and work cheap, by all means do so. I’m sure there’s someone out there who’ll gladly take your money and walk around Costa Rica on your dime. Good luck with that. You probably won’t even miss that twenty-five thousand, right? But will cutting corners grant you peace of mind or solve your problem? No, not without real results it won’t. That’s what matters…results. That’s basically what I provide, but I don’t work cheap, that’s all.”

She seemed a little taken aback. I could tell she had grown accustomed to flashing money at people and watching them jump through hoops. She bit her lower lip and took a moment to consider my viewpoint.

“Fine then,” she said at last, leaning back in her chair.