Book Review: Swimming With the Dead

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Swimming With the Dead     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Kathy Brandt
Class/Genre:   Mystery
Series: Hannah Sampson # 1
Signet, Oct 2003, $5.99, 272 pp.

In the British Virgin Islands (BVI), the owner of the Lucky Lady is making a solo dive into the bowels of the sunken ship, the Chikuzen. While looking around he sees another diver and when he recognizes who it is he knows he is in trouble. When his body is found, the authorities believe it was an accident and it looks like his killer will get off free. Soon afterward, someone breaks into the deceased’s office, kills his secretary and rifles through his files. His father, the Police Commissioner of Denver, begins to believe that his son was murdered

On the chance that his son was a homicide victim, the commissioner sends Hannah Sampson, head of the Dive and Recover team to the BVI to investigate his son’s death. From the moment she gets there and starts to question people, attempts are made on her life leading her to believe that Michael’s death was not an accident. As she gathers information about Michael’s last days, she begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together and once again comes very close to dying.

SWIMMING WITH THE DEAD is the first installment in a very exciting new series. The heroine of this novel falls in love with the British Virgin Islands and by the time the case is closed she is ready to move down there and give a new romantic relationship a chance to develop into something deeper. There are many viable suspects who had reason to want the victim dead so the reader is thoroughly entertained trying to figure out who the killer really is.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner