When best-selling author George Cummings dies before Palm Beach's most powerful citizens-moments after promising to reveal the secret at Sea Grape Cottage-private investigator Drake Marlow is hired to uncover what Cummings knew and who silenced him.
Following the trail through the author's book, Marlow uncovers a forbidden love, a decades-old crime, and a cache of gold doubloons capable of rewriting local history.
From the glittering shores of Palm Beach, where voodoo warnings whisper of a darker truth, to the tangled jungles of Abaco in the Bahamas and the dust-choked pages of forgotten church ledgers, every clue points toward someone with everything to lose.
Here's what one reviewer said:
I am an ARC reader for Book Sirens and this is my honest opinion. I've been reading this series from the start and I love it! Sally Ling manages to create the between the wars atmosphere so well I can almost hear the characters speaking in the way the characters did in films and radio shows made in the late 1940s and 50s - dramatic, with strict manners. The descriptions of everything of the time are spot on, like, for example the sweet relationship between Drake and his fianc嶪. This story is quite tragic. It revolves around a best selling book and how much is fiction, how much is true, with names changed. Drake Marlow is asked to investigate by the author's son - but the investigation takes several unexpected and baffling turns. The story that starts in the book in question takes place in 1891 with a relationship forbidden by skin color. It seems strange that Drake and some of the people he questions talk about it being "40 years ago" but even in the time period this story is set, the same social rules applied. As always, this is not just a great detective story, but a fascinating study of life in a past time
