Storm Surge - T. J. MacGregor

Trish MacGregor's atmospheric, pulse-pounding novels featuring the husband and wife team of Quin St. James and Mike McCleary have earned her legions of fans. In her hardcover debut she ups the ante, in an ambitious, suspenseful, unputdownable story of greed, overwhelming ambition, and spirits of the dead in the magical but dangerous city of Miami.

Quin St. James, now a mother as well as a crack private investigator, leaves her home north of the city to get to the bottom of the mysterious death of old friend and mentor Charlie Potemkin, a criminologist and former instructor at the CIA Academy in Langley, Virginia. A series of cryptic notes and photographs, which Charlie mails to friends right before his death, provides fragments of a puzzle Quin is determined to piece together with the aid of her husband and partner.

All paths in the investigation seem to lead back to Lawrence Crandall, a real-estate developer with grandiose plans to turn Miami Beach into a fabulous Deco-inspired resort. The Sea Witch, former home to Charlie Potemkin and other retirees, sits smack in the middle of a stretch of beach Crandall must have to complete his schemes. Leaving their daughter in the care of her aunt, Quin and Mike set out to penetrate the layers of intrigue that surround Crandall and his associates. As Mike McCleary conducts his own investigation with the help of Boone, a retired gumshoe, Quin finds herself in grave danger, and torn psychically by the conflicting demands of her profession and motherhood.

T. J. MacGregor weaves the shadowy movements of a Latin American hitman, Santeria, and mysterious activities at a dry-out clinic for old spooks (CIA agents) into this masterful story, which builds to an almost unbearable level of suspense. Hovering over all of the city and its people is the oncoming storm, casting everything in the novel in an apocalyptic, electrifying light.