Dan and Elaine Mahoney are finally settled in St. Augustine, Florida, and Elaine has her brand new private investigator's license, plus a job offer with a prestigious law firm. So, it's with some excitement that she talks to her first client, a young man whose mother recently died. Rick Elliston is convinced that her fall from the fourth floor widow's walk of their luxurious home was not suicide, as the police seem to think. He's convinced that his step-father pushed her. There was a big insurance policy. Elaine's challenge is to find the evidence, and the only problem is that there is none.
Dan, meanwhile, has been sent out to look over a sailing schooner that his company, United Life & Casualty has insured, and it turns out the owner of the business that offers sunset tourist cruises, is none other than Hank Beaufort, step-father of Elaine's client. And Dan really likes the guy-he just doesn't seem like a man who would kill his wife. At first.
As both of them dig into their cases, a whole new set of facts come out. There was marital straying, the luxury mansion was mortgaged to the hilt, and Hank needs money for his newest business scheme. It's a tangled web indeed, complicated by the inescapable fact that a hurricane is bearing down on the Florida coast. Can Dan and Elaine figure it out before the storm makes their jobs that much harder?
Praise for Susan Slater's Dan Mahoney series:
"Dan Mahoney is an appealingly resilient character, a welcome addition to the roster of sleuths that make the Southwest a hotbed of current mystery fiction." -Publishers Weekly
"Flash Flood is just what it sounds like-a fresh, surprising, adrenaline-rush whitewater ride. It's also funny. Susan Slater can flat-out write." -Don Winslow, New York Times bestselling author of The Cartel
"There'll be much, much more, with whispers of everything before Slater closes out this lively, surprising case, first of a series." - Kirkus Reviews