Gale Force

McKenna Rhodes, the heroine of this melodramatic nautical thriller from Thriller Award–finalist Laukkanen, blames herself for the death of her father, Randall, the maverick captain of the salvage tug Gale Force, who was lost at sea during a risky operation. Three years later, McKenna, who has inherited the Gale Force, hopes for a big payday after the Pacific Lion, a Japanese freighter full of brand new cars, founders off the Alaskan coast. Her success hinges on the involvement of Court Harrington, her former lover, who’s a gifted naval architect. What McKenna and her team don’t know is that the Pacific Lion also carried millions in bearer bonds stolen from the Yakuza, making that vicious organized crime gang, and the thief, her adversaries, in addition to the perilous waves. Readers expecting the clever plotting of Laukkanen’s Stevens and Windermere crime series (The Forgotten Girls, etc.) will be disappointed to find only predictable action tropes. [em]Author tour. Agent: Stacia Decker, Donald Maass Literary Agency. (May) [/em]