cover image SEA OF BONES

SEA OF BONES

Ron Faust, . . Bantam Dell, $6.99 (342pp) ISBN 978-0-553-58656-5

"This was the second day I watched the beat-up cabin cruiser search a grid pattern over the area where I had deep-sixed Raven Ahriman's corpse," declares Dan Shaw at the start of this literate crime thriller from Faust (Dead Men Rise Up Never ). After this tantalizing hook, the story of whom Shaw killed and why gets set aside as he's roped into helping a friend investigate the case of Victor Trebuchet, a jet-setting con man who recently used a modified Ponzi scheme involving satellites and rockets to bilk residents of a wealthy Florida community. Shaw ends up in Italy living next door to Victor, who has assumed an alias and is about to reel in his next set of victims. A cat-and-mouse game, with Shaw and friends using themselves as bait, leads to a brutal showdown staged against a lovely Italian backdrop. Faust tells a thrilling story in lean, tight noir prose ("McNally and Cavaretta wore old-timer cop suits, shiny at the elbows and knees, with one-and-one-half-inch cuffs, and ties that had seen a lot of burgers and fries pass by"). The mystery of the flawed, complex Shaw and his past, duly unraveled by the end, adds another layer of excitement. Agent, Jim Donovan. (On sale Sept. 28)