Sunday, November 23, 2008

Ice Water Mansions by Doug Allyn

Michelle “Mitch” Mitchell has returned home to Huron Harbor, Michigan to deal with her late father’s estate. Never mind that she has been gone for years, leaving as a pregnant teenager, and that he was a drunk when he wrecked his truck and wandered off into the woods to die from exposure. Still, she can’t quite believe the story and begins to suspect he may have been murdered. As she begins remodeling her dad’s dive shop/bar called The Nest, she soon discovers that her father had plenty of secrets – like that he was coming into a major amount of money, was running away to Baja with a local married real estate agent and had made some kind of shady deal with her son’s father’s family.

This is a great story with plenty of red herrings to keep it interesting. More than that, the story revolves around Mitch’s skills as a deepwater diver. One scene really gives the reader a taste of what diving deep is, especially when there is a sunken vessel involved. If you want to get a taste of the deep without getting wet, this is a great book. And for more adventures in deepwater diving, try Robert Kurson’s Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II.