From Publishers Weekly
Tourist season is in full flush at Cape Cod's Quanset Beach when a swimmer is badly mauled and dies from his injuries. Aristotle "Soc" Socarides, a commercial fisherman and PI, helps pull the victim from the water and is baffled by the wounds that look only somewhat like shark bites. The town selectmen nervously vote to keep the beach open--until bloated corpses start washing up on shore. While Soc speculates on this sudden rise in the death rate, Tillie Talbot asks him to find out whether the official scrutiny her summer camp has recently come under--from locals checking for sanitary code infractions to feds hunting illegal aliens--is linked to a real estate agent's interest in the valuable beachfront property. Next, John Flagg, an old friend and "spook" at an obscure government agency, hires Soc to do a bit of diving on the quiet. Likable Soc even finds time to help straighten out his young cousin Alex, who has fallen in with a bad crowd. Leaping nimbly from mystery to mystery, the overachieving Soc may strain credibility (anyone as clever as he is should take a day off from fishing and sort out the national debt), but his good nature makes him pleasant company nevertheless.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
One of Cape Cod's beaches has a serious litter problem: bodies keep washing up on the sand, shredded and gnawed to the bone. And the award-winning weekly newspaper editor keeps mentioning how close all this distress is to widow Tillie Talbot's sailing camp, which just happens to be situated on prime real estate that slick developer Fast Freddy Costello continues to make offers on. Tillie thinks someone's out to get her and asks Aristotle ``Soc'' Socarides, a neighborly fisherman/sleuth (Death in Deep Water, 1992), for help--which he sandwiches in between extricating a nephew from a drug bust, romancing dolphin-trainer Sally, and worrying about his ailing fishing buddy Sam. It'll take a bomb blast, an almost lethal underwater dive, and a confrontation with a bogus film crew before Soc and his pal Flagg, a Native American government spook, eliminate all the plotters, counterplotters, and chemical waste canisters from the area, thus freeing the area for Miz Tillie and her summer revelers. Leisurely, chatty, and far-fetched--but Soc is ingratiating company, and the scenery's attractive. Derivative (Parker's stuff; Benchley's Jaws) but easygoing and likable. --
Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
