Death at Six Fathoms

About the Book

California's techno-industrial Silicon Valley is the initial setting for a successful microchip company headed by its founder and CEO, Avery Blake. His two top officers are vice-presidents Chuck Gibson and George Reuter, who adamantly dislike each other and secretly aspire to higher things within the company. The only obstacle standing in their way is Blake, and . . . each other.

As a surprise award for twenty years of success within the industry, Blake arranges for a two week, company-paid sailboat charter cruise in the Caribbean for himself, his two top exec's and their wives. The two VP's grudgingly accept, but individual resentment builds at not being offered more in the way of salary increases and a company stock bonus.

The three executives and their wives arrive at Charlotte Amalie, the harbor town on the island at Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, where they join Captain Bud Kirby aboard the lavishly-appointed sailing ketch, Sundowner. They also meet young Chatto, a Carib Indian boy who crews as a deck hand.

  During the initial days of the cruise, a series of unexpected and quite unexplained potentially life-threatening accidents happen, not only aboard the boat, but also while SCUBA diving at some of the more remote island anchorage's along the way. Hostile resentment and tension builds at a steady pace among the six guests, with everyone pointing fingers at everyone else. Even the wives are at each others throat.

At this point, mother nature intervenes with a rare springtime gale and Kirby decides to duck into Christiansted Harbor on Saint Croix Island to ride out the storm. While there, Kirby re-ignites an old love affair with a beautiful, (and often tempestuous), young English woman named Victoria Campbell. Just before they prepare to sail out of Christiansted Harbor a day or two later, Vicky unexpectedly arrives at the boat and self-appoints herself as Sundowner's unpaid cook so she can keep a close watch on her captain-lover during the remainder of the tumultuous cruise.

Captain Kirby then takes them to a remote island, once an old pirate hangout, called Maroon Cay. After a difficult reef crossing to get Sundowner into the lagoon, the tension among the six charter passengers heighten following a nearly disastrous incident with a marauding shark that puts them all on edge. The following day one of the six passengers is murdered and it becomes Kirby's job to find out who did it and why before someone else is killed. Several unexpected twists and turns occur toward the end of the story before the real murderer is finally revealed to the reader.

Primary characters in "Death At Six Fathoms" include:

Avery Blake - Founder and CEO of CETUS Corporation, a successful microchip

                      manufacturing company located in California's Silicon Valley.

Helen Blake - Independently wealthy wife of Avery. She has class, beauty, and more

                     money than Avery could ever expect to make at CETUS. Many outsiders

                     enviously look on the pair as Ken and Barbie, all grown up.

Chuck Gibson - CETUS Marketing VP. He would do anything to attain the CEO job, but

                        Blake stands in the way, and Chuck's wife Donna never lets him forget it.

Donna Gibson - Chuck's frumpy wife. She constantly hounds him about the CEO job. A  

                        volatile temper causes her to lose self-control at times that scares even

                        her own husband, who comes to realize she is quite capable of murder.

Ge

About the Author

Norm Elpers, now living in Arizona with his wife and two sons, spent most of his life in the San Francisco Bay Area, and worked as a Computer Systems Analyst for a major oil company. Writing experience include non-professional journalism in both staff writing and editor categories while at school, and corporate technical writing while employed as an analyst. "Death At Six Fathoms" is his second novel. Many years of extensive deep-water sailing experience, mostly along the U.S. west coast, provided much of the incentive for writing this latest book. Lending itself toward the story is his experience as a certified deep-water SCUBA diver.