donald stanwood

An eccentric billionaire, a best-selling author, and a beautiful, self-destructive woman: three lives linked by the tragic sinking of the Titanic

April 11, 1912: The gala sailing out of Southampton of White Star Line’s peerless luxury liner, the R.M.S. Titanic. Among the dazzling, doomed names on the passenger list for this, the Titanic’s maiden voyage, is Clair August Ryker, the lovely and dissolute wife of billionaire industrialist William Ryker, and her ten-year-old daughter, Eva. Also present is a young couple, obviously newlyweds, the Eddingtons, who are drawn to Clair and her child. Beneath the decks, in the cargo hold, is a crate marked Ryker Industries.
 
November 30, 1941: In Honolulu, the apparently accidental death of tourist Albert Klein and the brutal murder of his wife confound the promising career of a rookie cop. Norman Hall will never be able to forget the grisly sight of the dismembered body of Martha Klein. Decades later, a best-selling author, he is still haunted.
 
What could possibly link these events? A faded film, capturing the sunny pleasures of a ship-board party, and a terrifying recording of a voice describing a night of darkest infamy and moral outrage?
 
It is Norman Hall’s assignment, fifty years after the sinking of the Titanic, to cover for World Magazine William Ryker’s multimillion-dollar salvage expedition to recover the lost riches of the Titanic. Norman Hall is determined to understand the reclusive billionaire’s motives for the expedition, but as he delves deeper into the past, he finds himself in grave danger. To solve the mystery, he must somehow unlock the memory of the deeply troubled Eva Ryker.