Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

Paul Bonin is a talented French artist living in Los Angeles. He travels to Central America to further challenge his creativity and inject a little adventure into his life. Paul meets a young research scientist, Ashley, while painting portraits in La Ceiba, Honduras. He sails with her to the Isle of Roatan and later joins her jungle expedition in Panama that is in search of the Golden Poison-Dart Frog. They fall in love, marry and she conducts her research on biotoxins while he runs an art studio. Their romantic and endearing love story ends with her unexpected and sudden passing. While shrouded in grief, Paul is approach by Elenor Bixby to create a portrait of her deceased husband with his cremated remains mixed into the paint. This portrait has an added dimension and Paul realizes that he has created a new art form – art that has a direct and deeply felt emotional connection with the viewer. Guided by the hand of fate, in Ashley’s basement stuff Paul discovers a collection jar of the dreadfully deadly biotoxin of the golden frogs. After being mugged two times, Paul evolves into a vigilante and entombs several thugs and one of their victims into his portraits. The emotional response of intense fear, dread and hate induced by looking at these portraits is overpowering; causing viewers to look away in short order. But Paul wants more and explores other avenues for his novel art creations including couples engaged in lovemaking. With his “golden” darts instantaneously freezing intimate couples at the very height of their ecstasy, they are then cremated and given eternal life in Paul’s “special paint” portraits. The pleasure invoked by these sexual portraits is intensely stimulating – both emotionally and physically. Soon he is a famous artist, however, he has gone too far … enter Inspector Royce Pinkerton. A compelling and captivating story of that which is imaginable.

Paul Bonin is a talented French artist living in Los Angeles. He travels to Central America to further challenge his creativity and inject a little adventure into his life. Paul meets a young research scientist, Ashley, while painting portraits in La Ceiba, Honduras. He sails with her to the Isle of Roatan and later joins her jungle expedition in Panama that is in search of the Golden Poison-Dart Frog. They fall in love, marry and she conducts her research on biotoxins at the John Hopkins Research Center while he paints portraits and runs an art studio. They get married on her sailboat at the Baltimore Inner Harbor in a very unique theme wedding. Their romantic and endearing love story ends with her unexpected and sudden passing. Paul Bonin and a local catholic priest are arrested for the kidnapping of Ashley from her hospital room and of her murder. The young artist gets past the kidnapping and murder charges but remains severely depressed. While shrouded in grief, Paul is approach by Elenor Bixby to create a portrait of her deceased husband with his cremated remains mixed into the paint. This portrait has an added dimension and Paul realizes that he has created a new art form – art that has a direct and deeply felt emotional connection with the viewer. Guided by the hand of fate, in Ashley’s basement stuff Paul discovers a collection jar of the dreadfully deadly biotoxin of the golden frogs. After being mugged two times, Paul evolves into a vigilante and entombs several thugs and one of their victims into his portraits. The emotional response of intense fear, dread and hate induced by looking at these portraits is overpowering; causing viewers to look away in short order. But Paul wants more and explores other avenues for his novel art creations including couples engaged in lovemaking. With his “golden” darts instantaneously freezing intimate couples at the very height of their ecstasy, they are then cremated and given eternal life in Paul’s “special paint” portraits. The pleasure invoked by these sexual portraits is intensely stimulating – both emotionally and physically. He becomes famous and known to the world at the New York International Art Exposition. Shortly thereafter he displays his artwork at the Baltimore International Art Exposition and the "stimulating" reactions to his portraits continue. However, he has gone too far … enter Inspector Royce Pinkerton. A compelling and captivating story of that which is imaginable.

The author is a retired U.S. Navy Special Operations officer with the rank of Captain. He has traveled and worked extensively worldwide (over 60 countries) and served on a number of military and commercial ships. During his tenure with "Operation Raleigh" (now "Raleigh International), he participated on expeditions to those Central American countries on which this novel was based (Honduras, Roatan, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Columbia and Panama). The adventure in the novel involving Caledonia Bay and the jungle expedition to the Pacific Coast of Columbia/Panama was based upon an Operation Raleigh expedition that the author personally led. A fully qualified scuba and deep sea diver (including saturation diving), he has been involved in numerous diving and marine salvage operations to locate and recover aircraft (such as commercial planes, military planes, military helicopters, Space Shuttle Challenger), and refloat sunken or stranded ships.