Description
Jack Mercer has been diving the Gulf Coast for fifteen years. He knows the feel of the water—the way the current runs, the temperature gradients, the particular quality of visibility at different depths and different seasons. He's gone down on a lot of wrecks. Nothing that's ever changed anything. The survey job is routine: a marine archaeology firm out of Savannah pays five hundred dollars for a wreck survey, mapping the site, documenting the hull, staying outside the structure. The coordinates are six miles offshore. The weather window is closing. Jack needs the work. He finds the wreck in forty-eight feet of water—a massive cargo vessel, prewar construction, buried to the turn of the bilge in accumulated silt. He photographs the hull, notes the collapse in the midship section, documents the scattered debris. He's almost finished when his light catches something in the shadow of a displaced hull plate. What he finds is not supposed to be there. What he finds attracts the wrong kind of attention. Tommy Briggs, the mechanic who works Creel's Landing, tells him to let it go. Elena Vance, the maritime historian who shows up asking questions, wants to know what he found. Bennett, the corporate representative who arrives on a sleek yacht, wants to make him an offer. And Hale—the man who has been watching the dock—wants to know where the salvage is now. The wreck was supposed to stay lost. The crate was supposed to stay buried. The documents inside were supposed to have burned in 1952. What follows is a thriller about what sinks and what surfaces, about the people who make their living below the waterline and the corporations who would rather the past stayed buried. Jack didn't ask for any of this. He took a survey job because he needed the money and *Mara's Run* needed to earn something. But now he has something that powerful people want, and the weather window is closing, and the tide is going out. Low Tide Salvage is crime fiction set in the working-class world of com
About the Author
Dean Archer is the author of "Low Tide Salvage" and other works.
