Mystery and Intrigue With Yacht Building

Bruce Von Stiers

Barbara Nickless is one of my all-time favorite mystery thriller authors. She has two fantastic series, one featuring railroad detective Sydney Rose Parnell and the other featuring Professor Evan Wilding.

Barbara has now taken things in a slightly different direction. Instead of railway mysteries or obscure ancient artifacts, she has taken on the world of ship building. And not just any ships. These are the cream of the crop luxury yachts.

The title of the new novel is The Drowning Game. It involves suicide, murder, spies, international intrigue and a hidden past that, if revealed, could topple a decades old yacht building empire.

Cass Brenner, along with her sister Nadia, are heirs to the Ocean House yacht building business. Cass is in Singapore, overseeing the firm's newest build, a superyacht for Chinese AI creator George Meng. But all is not what it seems and due to a dangerous encounter, Cass ends up dead.

The police seem to write Cass's death off as a suicide. But Nadia doesn't believe it. The day before Cass died, she seemed to be in good spirits. If Cass did kill herself, Nadia wants to know why. And what drove Cass to commit suicide.

But there is a lot more going on than just a yacht being built. There are Chinese government agents who seem overly interested in the yacht being built for George Meng. And just who is George Meng and what is so important about him that Chinese intelligence agents are sniffing around. And there is a presence by the CIA that adds to the intrigue surrounding George Meng and the yacht that Ocean House is building for him.

Added to the mix is a competitor to Ocean House who is making strides to take over the superyacht building realm. And Nadia discovers an age-old secret that could prove devastating to Ocean House and the Brenner family dynasty.

As with her previous novels, Nickless packs a lot of human emotion amongst all the intrigue and danger in The Drowning Game. Nadia is quite believable as she struggles to find answers for Cass's death.

The novel includes a subject that is getting a lot of attention these days, Artificial Intelligence. It seems that AI has been involved in a lot of critical software development, including military applications. If an AI developed product is tethered to a military application it could be very dangerous, and should it fall into the wrong hands, it could be devastating. This subject is a key element of the plot.

With The Drowning Game, Barbara Nickless has once again proven to be a top-notch mystery thriller author. The characters are quite believable, the dangers encountered are exciting and the inclusion of a timely subject, AI, makes this an absolutely intriguing novel.

The Drowning Game will be available in January 2025. It is being published by Thomas & Mercer. You can pre-order the novel from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop or Books-a-Million.

To find out more about this intriguing novel and it's amazing author, Barbara Nickless, visit her website at https://barbaranickless.com/

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© 2024 Bruce E Von Stiers