In this first of a planned three-part series, Skip Watson, a reclusive, professional/salvage diver and life-long resident of the Florida Keys, is busy working to uncover a vast fortune in sunken treasure from a Spanish Galleon circa 14th Century that has eluded him for decades. Just as Skip feels certain that he’s closing in on a major find, he is asked by a long-time associate Alan Burkett, to assist him in investigating the mysterious crash of a commercial airliner in the Florida Everglades, where all aboard perished. Reluctantly, Skip agrees to help-out. What they find out together leads them to believe that the airliner crash was indeed a hoax crash, but why? Perhaps, more importantly, who is behind it?
Soon after returning home, and leaving Alan alone to uncover the truth behind the hoax, Skip finds himself the prime-suspect of a murder investigation into the gruesome death of this same associate. It seems the evidence that the state of Florida has against him is more than circumstantial, at least at first. Later, after Skip answers all of investigators’ questions, and his alibi is found to be intact, he is allowed to leave the state’s custody, and resume his quest for the treasure-ladened Galleon once again. Skip becomes suspicious that someone is determined to harm him after he shrewdly manages to spoil an attempt at an obduction. Another attempt at his abduction by a well-armed and militant-styled team will ultimately end in a high seas, high-stakes showdown.
Though Groundscore is the author’s Freshman attempt at fiction, it is a novel based on an actual working, underwater archeological wreck-site, located in the Lower Florida Keys, and is based on actual events. Readers will appreciate the fact that the author painstakingly research and wrote it specifically for readers who appreciate these qualities in fiction.