Buried at Sea
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4.1 • 11 Ratings
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Jim Leighton is young, fit, and hungry for excitement—and his dream of adventure is coming true, now that he's been hired as a deckhand and personal trainer to a wealthy investment banker and setting sail for Rio de Janeiro aboard the luxury yacht Hustle. But Jim's enigmatic employer is not what he seems. With all his money, charm, and seafaring tales, Will Sparks is a man who's guarding a terrifying, potentially lethal secret. And in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Sparks makes a startling announcement: They are changing course for Africa because someone is pursuing them. Someone who wants them dead.
With no previous sailing experience—far from the sanctuary of land and in the company of a stranger who is possibly delusional and certainly dangerous—Jim is suddenly trapped in a harrowing race for survival across the vast waters of the globe, fleeing a faceless threat that inexplicably knows where they are and where they are going. And when destiny places him alone at the helm, Jim's options are reduced to two: sail or die, because the terror relentlessly approaching at breakneck speed will not be shaken off or deterred—nor will it rest until Hustle and Jim Leighton both lie broken and lifeless on the ocean floor.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The salt spray flies in this ocean-soaked adventure thriller by a writer (Red Sky at Morning) who really knows the sea. Physical training expert Jim Leighton knows nothing about sailing boats, but signs on for what should be a pleasant and profitable body-conditioning six-week ocean voyage to Rio as the personal trainer of an elderly and eccentric capitalist, Will Spark. They will sail alone on Spark's new diesel-powered sailboat, the Hustle. But Jim soon finds himself on a wilder ride than he had expected, forced to crisscross the Atlantic to escape Will's implacable enemies. Garrison paints a somber picture of rampaging capitalism, with financial predators stopping at nothing to acquire power. In Nigeria, one of Will's former lovers is hired to murder Will; he kills her, but is seriously hurt. With Will sidelined, Jim learns much about sailing as they recross the Atlantic to Brazil. Meanwhile, Jim keeps getting e-mail updates from Shannon Riley, the woman he loves back in Connecticut, who researches the checkered past of his likable but devious employer. A man of many aliases, Spark is being pursued by the ruthless and powerful McVay Humane Foundation, whose directors want the microprocessors he has invented, which may be inserted into the bloodstream to detect and counteract a number of physical problems, so are worth a fortune. There are surprising revelations as the trip gets deadlier and the harried sailors flee to the Falklands and skirt Antarctica. Garrison ratchets up the suspense in deft segments, and his portrait of an angry sea is fully alive, from nights of star-filled beauty to tornadolike waterspouts and hazardous ice floes.
