Ice Brine

by William P Eshleman

Overview

After completing his PhD, Peter Case returns home, eager to join his best friend's marine salvage business on the Canadian West Coast. The cheerful prospect of getting on with his life is quickly shattered by a hair-raising highway pursuit through the Rockies. The intrigue and chaos that hounded him in Jamaica had followed him home.

Between attempts on his life, a sketchy salvage job, and a mysterious whistling saviour, Case sifts through lies and half-truths as he delves deeper into the mystery. His search lures him into a multi-agency manhunt for an international crime syndicate operating somewhere within the rugged beauty of the Gulf Islands.

Case can only be sure of two unfortunate truths. First, he'd obviously pissed off the wrong people in Jamaica. Second, while the agency was hunting the syndicate, the syndicate was hunting him.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781039148093
Publisher:	FriesenPress
Publication date:	05/30/2022
Series:	A Peter Case Novel
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

After publishing his first novel, Warm Salt, Bill Eshleman's readers posed the most inspirational question an author could possibly hope for . . . What happens next?

An experienced scuba diver, Bill writes to merge the exhilaration of diving with the thrill of an action-adventure mystery. The underwater world provides a wondrous stage for his graphic imagination.

Born and raised in Western Canada, Bill lives with his family near Calgary, Alberta. He's currently being trained by the newest member of the family, an Aussie-Border puppy (aptly named Whiskey).

Watch for Case Closed, the third Peter Case novel.

Editorial Reviews

2022-07-25
A diving pro and part owner of a Canadian undersea salvage company tangles with international criminals and multiple intelligence agencies.

In Eshleman’s second installment of a thriller series, Peter Case returns home to Canada after completing his doctorate in zoology in Jamaica, where he also got involved in an international conspiracy with a CIA connection. Now, he and his buddy Hal operate their maritime salvage business out of a former fish factory that is half a kilometer up the inlet from the vacation cabin of redheaded widow Kathleen and her precocious young daughter, Amy. Case, a swaggering, 6-foot-3-inch (in cowboy boots), sculpted-thighed, deep-chested, long-haired heavy smoker, is smitten with Kathleen, but imminent danger demands more of his attention. On a mission to kill him are crime ring members he encountered in Jamaica, a pair of whom Case outmaneuvers on a twisty mountain road. Humor adds flavor to the story; for example, when examining a sunken wreck, Case encounters a shark that turns out to be a dead specimen Hal released in the ship to freak out his friend (mission accomplished). Car chases, kidnappings, fights, killings, and proposed torture, such as a “foot tenderized with a ball-peen hammer,” saturate the book. Case is so cocky and so often in danger that someone says to him, “Everyone you meet seems to want you dead. I believe I’m beginning to understand why.” Case’s mind whirls as he realizes some of the players—“CIA, CSIS, MI6, KGB”—in the crime drama surrounding him. The backstory of the Jamaica escapade is revealed organically, as is Case’s past as a bullied, chubby kid who transformed his body and built his confidence by engaging in martial arts and weight training. Underwater sequences are handled particularly well, and scenes of the stunning Rockies are travelogue perfect. But Kathleen’s inability to keep tabs on her daughter is bothersome, and the spunky kid often comes off as more annoying than charming (remember what Lou Grant said about spunk).

An exhilarating thriller; Clive Cussler fans will find that Peter Case floats their boat.

Kirkus Reviews