An abandoned, blood-spattered boat and its missing owner put a young reporter in dangerous waters in Yocum’s thriller.
“Stuff happens out there,” remarks Chatham chief of police Norm Thompson—he’s referring specifically to the waters off Chatham, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. Boston Globe general assignment reporter Stacie Davis knows all too well of Chatham’s dark doings. Two years earlier, she reported on a bizarre murder mystery that nearly gave new meaning to the word deadline. Now, she’s reluctantly returned to the Cape after a boat owned and operated by local dentist Jim Soucy is discovered adrift on the water. Soucy, nowhere to be found (all that blood on the boat may not be fish-related), is “a card-carrying member of the top tier.” Class tensions between Chatham’s working-class community and the influx of wealthy newcomers like Soucy are making waves as well-off families are driving up real estate prices and “getting in the way of [commercial fishermen] trying to make a living.” Soucy himself is not exactly well liked (“A hot dog asshole,” is how Chief Thompson describes him). Davis is reluctant to return to “the outer reaches of the North American continent.” Beyond the peril in which she found herself, she had “an intense but fleeting romance” with Carl, a charter fisherman, but their careers got in the way. Carl steers her to one possible suspect, a fisherman with an “aggressive” grudge against Soucy. But Chatham, like the ocean, keeps its secrets. Yocum, a former journalist and Cape Cod local, knows his way around a story and the community depicted therein. His sophomore Cape Cod Mystery installment following A Whisper Came(2021) effectively revisits familiar characters (including Carl and Det. Sarah Langone) and introduces memorable new ones such as Nick Parsons, a no-nonsense Investigative Services agent with the Miami Coast Guard station. Yocum has a way with ominous dialogue that heightens the suspense, as when Stacie, in direst danger, asks her captor the time: “I’m curious,” she says. “Look what curiosity got you,” the captor responds.
A vivid sense of place, colorful characters, and a fishy disappearance will float the boat of mystery fans.
