"Bloodless Coup" is the story of the final months of the brutal Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier regime. The narrator is the newly arrived Coast Guard Attaché to the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The "Commandant" quickly becomes an unwitting catalyst in a dangerous and complex plot to drive Baby Doc out of Haiti. His friendship with a powerful Haitian houngan (voodoo priest) leads him into a world of intrigue, magic and mysticism that is far beyond anything he has ever experienced. He finds himself immersed in a bizarre world where zombies are everywhere, where the boundary between reality and dream constantly fluctuates and dissolves, and where life and death are interchangeable.

As the death throes of the Duvalier dictatorship become increasingly violent, the Commandant is caught in a whirlpool of seduction, betrayal, brutality, and revolution. He learns what all visitors to Haiti learn: Haiti is a different planet, with different rules. It infects all who come there with its desperation, its energy, its sadness . . . and its hopelessness. He learns that there can be no such thing as a "bloodless coup" in Haiti. Everything in Haiti is written in blood.

Bloodless Coup is the WINNER of the Maurice Prize for Literature! The Maurice Prize was established in 2005 by author John Lescroart and UC Davis. The prize is a $10,000 award Lescroart named in honor of his father, Maurice, to inspire UC Davis graduates to publish their literary work.