A Crime of the Under-Seas

In the sweltering colonial heat of Ceylon, private detective Christopher Collon drinks and trades stories at the Grand Oriental Hotel until an elderly stranger approaches with a proposition that will drag him beneath the waves and into murder. A priceless pearl was lost when a ship went down off the coast. The agent who carried it is now dead. The depths hold their secrets jealously, but Collon is about to learn that the real danger waits not in the ocean's darkness, but in the human hearts circling the prize. As he prepares for his dive, Collon discovers that someone will kill to keep that pearl surfacing and that the line between the exotic East and its English visitors blurs dangerously in matters of greed. Guy Boothby writes with the breezy confidence of a man who knows his way around a plot, spinning colonial-era adventure with sharp dialogue and an eye for the romantic, dangerous mystique of Ceylon's underbelly. For readers who want their mysteries with sun, sea, and a touch of the tropics.