The Big Deep: Caribbean Noir

Disbarred attorney Phillip Blackwell sails through the Caribbean placing as much distance as possible between himself and home. He tarries at one small island, and is hired by a dissolute plantation owner to find his missing young wife. Blackwell’s ensuing investigation places him among treacherous people - greedy, sordid and calculating. His friend is found dead with a hideous injury. Blackwell is certain he was murdered by one them. Finding his friend’s killer becomes a priority, more so than his original assignment. Someone wants his investigation to stop - he gets shot at, beaten and detained, but he persists. A limb of the missing wife’s body washes up at the marina. If it is she, his job done. Or is it? Blackwell won’t sail on until he determines the truth of both his friend’s murder and the disappearance of the missing wife.
The Big Deep takes the reader from a glamorous mountain top night club and gothic plantations to the island whore house. Blackwell’s milieu is stocked with eccentric sailors, women damaged or lethal, the corrupt and the sadistic and an exceptional woman whom he loves but cannot have.
The Big Deep, is crime fiction written with Raymond Chandler hovering, as he does for many of us, and incorporates some of his bon mots peppered among the author’s. The title is of course, a take on The Big Sleep. The first of a Noir series, Blackwell will sail on to other islands to be recruited for perilous assignments. In the the forthcoming, Lady in the Harbor, Blackwell continues to find himself placed in jeopardy. With his ruminations of sailing as a metaphor for a purer life, we find hints of Blackwell’s own cryptic background. Author Valerie Marcley sailed through the Caribbean for a decade and plans to create new risks for Blackwell as he navigates the waters and secrets of the West Indies.