From
Kirkus Review
Screwball romance and homage to Jules Verne as an unlikely
couple tangle with a demented billionaire's secret weapon. Garrison
(Buried at Sea, Feb. 2002, etc.) has so admirably established
himself as craftsman of sailing adventure that there's an urge
to skip the plot details and get to the fun stuff: the delightfully
dangerous drama of flawed but intrepid loners finding new strengths
on the open sea as they beat the bad guys every time.
Our intrepid loner this time is David Hope, former journalist
who runs scuba charters out of the Virgin Islands. Just as he
scatters the ashes of his former lover, his boat is nearly destroyed
by a US Navy submarine whose commander thinks Hope might have
something to do with a computer shutdown that near nearly sank
the sub. After the sub lets him go, Hope returns to Tortula to
find that the last charter of the season has canceled. The screwball
antics set in when he fails to pick up Sally Moffit, an undersea
nature filmmaker, at a bar, and even so ends up helping her (she's
has just been dumped by her filmmaker husband) steal some of her
husband's equipment, then agrees to take her to Bermuda to film
the mating habits of a species of dolphin.
Before romance can bloom, the two see a dolphin with the size
and lethal abilities of a killer whale. Before they can learn
more about it, they're hailed by William Tree, unctuous, effusively
polite, repulsively fat offshore oil mogul who lives aboard an
enormous sailing ship. It gives nothing away to say that Tree,
dolphin, and computer failure are linked, that Tree is more of
a Dr. Frankenstein than a Captain Nemo, and that he'll use Hope
and Moffit as target for a nasty new weapon.
Skip the high-tech antics and Tracy/Hepburn banter: when it comes
to high-seas action, Garrison is at the crest of the wave.