Under Water
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Once a competitive swimmer destined for Olympic gold, Duck Darley is now barely scraping by as an unlicensed PI, chasing down cheating spouses for the same Manhattan elite who once viewed him as equal . . .
Duck’s lost glory days resurface when he’s hired to track down the teenaged sister of a former teammate turned Olympic champion. Privileged Madeline McKay vanished over Labor Day weekend, leaving behind a too-perfect West Village apartment and a promising athletic career of her own. Duck thinks he’s hunting for a self-destructive runaway—until Madeline’s film student ex is savagely murdered, and the media spins her as the psycho who killed him.
As Duck searches for Madeline, he’s plunged back into the dark underbelly of Olympic swimming—a world rife with wild lies and terrible violence. And he soon learns that no matter how hard he tries to escape his past, demons still lurk beneath every surface . . .
“A novel that sparkles with wit, sass, and wonderful narrative style.”—Ken Bruen
“Deliciously lascivious and violent . . . the pull of his dark world will keep readers captivated to the last page.”—Kyle Mills
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Olympic swimmer Barrett dives into the disturbing side of competitive sport in his savage thriller debut, a series launch. Once an Olympic-class swimmer, Lawrence "Duck" Darley took to drink and spent time in prison. Now an unlicensed PI specializing in uncovering the infidelities of the rich, Duck contracts with wealthy New Yorker Margaret McKay, the widowed mother of an old swimming buddy of his, to quietly find her troubled 18-year-old daughter, Madeline. A promising swimmer, Madeline texted her mother "I'm so sorry" a few days earlier, then disappeared, last seen by her brother at the family's country house in Rhinebeck. Duck's part-time partner in detection, dominatrix Cass Kimball, brings competence, toughness, and sex industry connections to the search for the missing Madeline. Barrett relies on familiar genre tropes illicit affairs, drug deals, blackmail, and the Russian mafia but dials them up for high shock value. The expected if still satisfying ending leaves Darley so broken that it's hard to imagine how he'll be enticed into the next investigation.
