Delving into sometimes exotic foreign cultures is a popular theme among today’s journalists. A good discussion about what contrasts one culture with another, while standing on the outside looking in, depends how far the writer finds himself from the subject matter. Imagine the challenge facing a foreign journalist assigned to compare American customs and traditions in Boston, Massachusetts with those of Miami, Florida. Historical fiction seems to suit Pinellas County author, Harvey Alexander Smith, as seen in his most recent novel, Danger Beyond the Reef, an action-adventure-drama about two Greek-American families in Tarpon Springs, Florida. Smith paid his dues as a writer who gets inside a culture by actually living it. A former advertising executive and copywriter for over 30 years, he has written about what he observed from inside the cultural arena as an “ex-pat” living in Guadalajara, Mexico for 11 years and, most recently, El Salvador.