Night Diver-Elizabeth Lowell

Night Diver Elizabeth Lowell Morrow, Apr 8 2014, $26.99 ISBN: 9780062132826 Almost fifteen years ago off the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, then teenager Kate Donnelly watched helplessly as her parents died in a storm. Terrified of the water ever since the nightmarish accident; Kate quit her family sea salvage business Moon Rose Ltd. to become a landlubber North Carolina accountant. Her brother Larry calls Kate begging her to return to the business in Florida as they are in trouble and need her financial expertise to save Moon Rose from a bad contract he signed with the British government. She refuses until he uses the extortion of filing bankruptcy will kill their Grandpa, but insists she will not sleep on the Golden Bough or go near the water. The British government sends Holden Cameron to investigate the salvage of the Moon Rise in which the treasure sent to the Antiquities Office is much smaller than expected. He assumes the Donnelly team is violating the agreement by stealing some of the loot; so he pulls no punches when he meets Kate by telling her he will most likely shut down the operation. Soon after his arrival, ugly incidents occur, which leads to a distrustful alliance between the dive consultant and the non-diving Donnelly. This is an entertaining romantic suspense that opens at a leisurely pace introducing the key cast, the locale, and the contract. Once the background is set, the engaging storyline accelerates into a hyperspeed tense thriller filled with red herrings and several suspects to include the Diving Donnelly brood, and a romance built from shaky grounds due to the inquiry seemingly incriminating her loved ones. Harriet Klausner