The Tuna Hunter

The helicopter industry has always counted amongst its ranks a certain type of restless nomad. A misfit, flouting convention, who travels the world in a constant search for adventure. Not for him the large, lumbering, twin-engine, two crew helicopter ‘school bus runs’ – well paid, but soul destroying. Rigid regulations irk him. He grows restless flying endlessly in droning straight lines, mindlessly monitoring advanced avionics and a fully coupled autopilot. Instead, in nippy, joyously single-engined craft and invariably single pilot, he delights in untamed frontier flying, often doors off.
In the most far off and inhospitable parts of the globe you will find these oddball, scruffy creatures, braving acute physical discomfort, not to mention isolation and danger. They love to truly roam the untamed skies, and calmly cross over jungles and snake filled swamps. They treat vast, shark infested oceans as their personal playground. Far beyond the range of conventional Search and Rescue Services and convenient Emergency Rooms, they have always accepted the inevitable risks that haunt their chosen profession, and always will. They love to live, but, deep down, they know how to die. Their ranks include the young and old, the gregarious types and the loners.
One such restless nomad is Bob McCann. A typical wanderer, he knows himself to be an incorrigible member of this Foreign Legion. He attempts to live in harmony with Mother Nature, his fellow Man, and, hardest of all, with himself. For Bob McCann hides, behind the bonhomie and the soft spoken exterior, a turbulent past. When Fate comes knocking and he meets the gentle woman of his silent dreams, their whirlwind romance is brutally cut short by dark storm clouds. Faced with the unthinkable, he is forced to call on a clinical coldness that hides deep inside him and enter a former homicidal mindset he hoped to never embrace again. This novel explodes into an action-filled blast of truly insane helicopter flying scenes, coupled with the descent into methodical madness that can only be fully understood by those who have stood on its bleak shores.
Francis Meyrick has called on intense personal experiences and a feeling background to weave a compelling mix of autobiographical fact and fiction. Leaving it to the reader to decide where the boundary should be drawn.