| Mac
McCellan is fresh out of the Marines. He ended his three-decade
career by serving in Iraq. Mac has seen enough death and destruction
and hopes to begin his retirement with a relaxing fishing
trip in Florida’s panhandle. Only problem is, the first
time he casts his fishing line out, he snags a dead body.
Maddie
Harper had been orphaned as a young girl and now her life
had ended before her twenty-first birthday. Raised by an aunt
and uncle, Maddie had been a popular girl who was in love
with a young man who did not meet the standards of her guardians.
Her boyfriend is missing as well.
Mac McClellan
wants nothing to do with the investigation but when a bag
of marijuana is found on his rented fishing boat, he is drawn
into the nightmare. He is regarded as a person of interest
in Maddie’s death.
Sheriff
Bo Picron isn’t exactly friendly toward Mac but stops
short of accusing him of murder. The dead girl was Sheriff
Picron’s niece. You might say that their relationship
is tenuous.
Things get more complicated when Mac finds the wrecked and
sunken boat belonging to Maddie’s boyfriend. It’s
as if these clues are being dangled in front of him.
And then
Sheriff Bo Picron approaches Mac and asks him for some very
discreet help. He wants to deputize Mac.
Like any small town, the closets in this village are full
of skeletons.
While
some communities have their love triangles this little hamlet
has more of a Rubik’s Cube with the players changing
partners more frequently than square dancers. Even though
Maddie’s family and that of her boyfriend were involved
in a decades long feud, it seem that there was enough fence
jumping and bed hopping to write a book about.
Is this
what caused the environment that led to the death of an innocent
young college girl? It surely seems that way.
This
is the first in the Mac McClellan series and it looks like
the author has a winner. The story moves along at a good clip
with just the right mix of violence and romance. Well-balanced
and well told, it’s a very good book.
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