Seychelle Sullivan Series by Christine Kling

SURFACE TENSIONYears ago Seychelle Sullivan had the chance to save a person’s life. But on that summer night in Florida, lost in a world of teenage resentment and loneliness, Sychelle was not able to feel any pain but her own. Today Seychelle captains her father’s forty-six-foot salvage boat out of Fort Lauderdale’s New River. She’s seen change sweep through South Florida, and witnessed friends and lovers come and go... moreSURFACE TENSIONYears ago Seychelle Sullivan had the chance to save a person’s life. But on that summer night in Florida, lost in a world of teenage resentment and loneliness, Sychelle was not able to feel any pain but her own. Today Seychelle captains her father’s forty-six-foot salvage boat out of Fort Lauderdale’s New River. She’s seen change sweep through South Florida, and witnessed friends and lovers come and go. But she’s never escaped that one moment when she could have made a difference and didn’t. Now each time she rescues a ship in distress, a little hope is born in her again.On a steamy Florida morning Seychelle is answering a Mayday call launched from the five-million-dollar Broward yacht called Top Ten. Racing her fiercest competitor for salvage rights, Seychelle has a personal stake in this rescue: Her former lover, Neal Garrett, is the yacht’s hired skipper. But being the first to reach Top Ten will lead Seychelle to a bloody payday. A beautiful woman has been stabbed to death onboard. And Garrett is nowhere to be found.Even on shore, the pressures are mounting–Seychelle owes money on her boat, and her love life is in shambles. Within twenty-four hours of finding the dead woman and towing Top Ten out of the surf, Sychelle realizes that she has stepped into a lethal business involving some of South Florida’s sleaziest criminals. While the police treat her as the prime suspect, Seychelle begins to unravel a tangled plot centered on a strip club where “all the girls are tens on top.” Discovering the sordid secrets of the owner of the yacht she rescued and the fate of the man she had once loved, Seychelle is connecting human predators with innocent victims, and a mystery on land with a mystery buried deep beneath the sea. Now, to find out what really happened to Neal Garrett, Seychelle must retrace his last steps, through two murders and a horrific crime wave, to a final confrontation with someone who may want to kill her . . . or be her salvation. less

Christine Kling’s first novel, Surface Tension, introduced a remarkable sleuth in Seychelle Sullivan. Now, in Kling’s electrifying new book, Sullivan returns–a tall, strong, beautiful woman in a man’s world, caught up in a complex drama set on the South Florida seacoast, where the crimes, hopes, and follies of dreamers and con artists all come washing ashore.Seychelle is proud to follow in her father’s footsteps and work the waters on a tugboat... moreChristine Kling’s first novel, Surface Tension, introduced a remarkable sleuth in Seychelle Sullivan. Now, in Kling’s electrifying new book, Sullivan returns–a tall, strong, beautiful woman in a man’s world, caught up in a complex drama set on the South Florida seacoast, where the crimes, hopes, and follies of dreamers and con artists all come washing ashore.Seychelle is proud to follow in her father’s footsteps and work the waters on a tugboat. She remembers Florida before it fractured between rich and poor, white and black, Cuban and Haitian. For Seychelle, life is all about making a living, making love, and keeping her eye on the beauty that still remains in an ever-changing community. Then her life takes a turn when her tug intercepts with a swamped fishing boat in the Gulf Stream. Inside the boat are a murdered woman and a little girl in a white dress.When Seychelle returns to shore with a traumatized Haitian girl named Solange in her cabin, she is faced with the border patrol, the police, and an unraveling love affair. Determined to protect Solange, and somehow keep her from being sent back to Haiti, Seychelle becomes obsessed with the forces that nearly killed the girl–and left her speechless with terror. All Seychelle knows for sure is that Solange’s father was an American . . . and that somehow she slipped through a murderer’s hands. Exploring the hidden world of Florida’s Haitian community, Seychelle realizes that Solange is still in great danger–and that one killer has claimed dozens of lives. With a murderer stalking the child, Seychelle is racing to unravel dangerous truths. But to get the answers she needs, she must return to where it all started: in the waters of the Gulf Stream, where people died for a hope and prayer– and a man with a machete did the work of the devil himself.Taut, suspenseful, and filled with remarkable descriptions of Florida’s many moods and guises–from million-dollar waterfront homes to haunted, backwater mangrove swamps and secret Voodoo rituals–Cross Current is alive with personalities and passion and the work of an author boldly staking out territory all her own.From the Hardcover edition. less