cover image Wreckers' Key

Wreckers' Key

Christine Kling, . . Ballantine, $24.95 (271pp) ISBN 978-0-345-47905-1

At the start of Kling's salty if at times meandering fourth Florida suspense thriller (after Bitter End ), tugboat captain Seychelle Sullivan, who inherited her dad's business three years earlier, is still resisting advanced GPS technology. Her more successful competitors, like upstart Neville Pinder, have no compunction about using it, while such unsavory developments as an increase in insurance fraud (an unhappy client is suing her) have her questioning her future. When her friend Nestor Frias runs a millionaire's yacht aground in Key West, Nestor insists the GPS navigation system was somehow compromised. While Seychelle is towing the yacht to Fort Lauderdale, Nestor's killed in a windsurfing accident that his pregnant widow insists was murder. An unexpected reunion with an old childhood friend, Ben Baker, once a nerd, now a hottie, provides some romantic tension. A shocking resolution to this solid tale of nautical adventure will catch most readers by surprise. (Mar.)