Surface Tension [Mass Market Paperback]

Christine Kling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 28, 2004

In a stunning debut novel featuring a resourceful female amateur P.I., Christine Kling establishes herself as a major voice in suspense fiction. Surface Tension depicts a world as deceptive as a Florida land deal, as electrifying as the hottest Miami nightclub, and as dangerous as the tug of an invisible riptide. . . .

SURFACE TENSION

Years 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.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this strong suspense debut, Seychelle Sullivan owns a salvage tug near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and makes a precarious living piloting luxury yachts and sportfishing boats in the Florida waters. When her radio picks up a distress call from the Top Ten, she hurries to the scene, hoping to net a windfall. The luxurious yacht is skippered by her former lover, Neal, who seems to have abandoned ship and left a dead body behind. Who is the dead girl, where is Neal, why do the police suspect Seychelle, and how much can she hope to recover for salvaging the yacht? When she finds her modest cottage has been searched and her stash of emergency money is missing, she figures Neal must be alive, hiding from the police or from the girl's killer. The Top Ten's representative offers a paltry sum to settle the salvage claim, so Seychelle decides to find out who the real owner is and go to arbitration. As the tension and suspense build, Seychelle's existence becomes increasingly precarious. Kling vividly portrays a characteristic dichotomy of the Sunshine State-native Floridians trying to earn an honest living in an atmosphere where anything and anyone can be tainted by loan sharks, drug money or worse. As a female tugboat captain, Seychelle is one of the genre's more unusual amateur sleuths, and Kling makes her one of its more endearing ones as well.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Salvage boat operator Seychelle Sullivan has a good reason to rush to the rescue of a beleaguered yacht: an old flame is the hired skipper. Complicating matters, though, is the dead body onboard. A much-touted debut.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (September 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345448278
• ISBN-13: 978-0345448279
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.8 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #549,190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I have spent more than thirty years living on and around boats and cruising the waters of the North and South Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Caribbean. I've written articles and stories for many boating publications including Sailing, Cruising World, Motor Boating & Sailing, and The Tiller and the Pen. When I was married, I helped my husband build a 55-foot custom sailing yacht. After launching her, we sailed through the Panama Canal to St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands where we chartered for over two years. While in the islands, I received my 100-ton Auxiliary Sail Captains license.

It was that sailing experience that led me to set my first nautical suspense novel, SURFACE TENSION (2002), on the waterfront in Fort Lauderdale. Featuring Florida female tug and salvage captain, Seychelle Sullivan, the first book was followed by CROSS CURRENT (2004) and BITTER END (2005). The fourth book in the series, WRECKERS' KEY was released in February 2007. I'm now retired from my day job as an English professor at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale, and I am living the dream of full-time cruising on board my 33-foot Caliber sailboat Talespinner. I'm hard at work preparing my new stand-alone sailing thriller set in the Caribbean, CIRCLE OF BONES, for release in late summer of 2011.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surface Tension is impossible to put down!, December 15, 2002

By 

Dick Levinson (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Surface Tension (Hardcover)

How well does mystery writer Christine Kling know South Florida? Just as Raymond Chandler exposed the soft underbelly of Los Angeles in a way that readers can never forget, Kling offers readers a tour of a dark, gritty Fort Lauterdale that the tourists never see. Sam Spade would love Seychelle Sullivan, the heroine of Kling's new novel, Surface Tension. Sullivan is determined, resourceful and honorable in a world where many men have no honor at all.

As the novel begins, Sullivan is the captain of a salvage ship responding to a distress call from a multi-million dollar yacht. She is determined to rescue the yacht's captain, a man she once loved. It is a bitter irony that Sullivan's desire to save a live soon threatens to destroy her own. She is forced to confront a world of greed, corruption and cruelty that would have frightened Dante himself.

Kling is such a gifted writer that the reader imagines that she is perched at his elbow, telling the story to him alone. Readers should be warned that this book is impossible to put down. Sleep is less important than finding out what happens to Seychelle Sullivan.

Kling has spent twenty years of her life on or around boats and her experience shows. She writes about the world of boating, fishing and skin diving with an authority that is one of the pleasures of this fast-paced thriller. If I could send Ms. Kling a message via ESP, it would be: "When is the sequel coming out?"

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An impressive debut, March 5, 2004

By 

Larry Gandle (Tampa, Florida) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Surface Tension (Hardcover)

Seychelle Sullivan is the captain of a salvage boat in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. One morning, she receives a Mayday call from a yacht at sea. The yacht is a vessel Sey is very much familiar with in that her old boyfriend, Neil, is the pilot. The call is made from a desperate sounding woman. Sey locates the boat and discovers the bloody body of a young woman. Neil is nowhere to be found. Things get worse when Sey finds herself the primary suspect of the police. She must discover, on her own, what happened aboard the ship and locate Neil. She soon finds her life in danger.
Christine Kling proves in her first outing that she is a writer to be reckoned with. Not only does she have an apparent natural talent at storytelling, but can create memorable, yet, realistic characterizations. SURFACE TENSION is a character driven regional mystery in the same vein as the hard-boiled female protagonists of Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton or Sara Paretsky. It is obvious Ms. Kling knows about boats in that they are major players in this book. The southern Florida locale very much plays a part in this work and is utilized quite effectively. Pacing is brisk and the plot carefully constructed. Florida mystery writers are among the best in the genre. I predict Christine Kling will prove to be no exception to that statement. An impressive debut.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surface Tension, January 18, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Surface Tension (Hardcover)

For her first novel, I thought this was a great read. I lived in Florida for almost 20 years and found Ms. Kling was extremely accurate in her diescriptions of the various places in and around Ft. Lauderdale. The novel held my interest and was suspensful, her characters believable. I am looking forward to more books from Ms. Kling