Slipknot

In her bestselling nonfiction book All Fishermen Are Liars, Linda Greenlaw confessed a desire to write fiction -- and readers responded with an enthusiastic "Please do!" At last, she satisfies their hunger with this sharp-witted, compulsively readable mystery, the first in a series featuring marine investigator Jane Bunker.

When Jane moves back to the sleepy Maine fishing community where she was born, it's to escape the seamy crime scenes and unsavory characters that crossed her path in Miami. Surely whatever crimes are committed in touristy, idyllic Green Haven wont involve anything as nasty as what she saw in Florida. It's a bit of a shock, then, when Nick Dow, the town drunk, turns up dead, and it's not the simple accident that everyone assumes it to be. Jane soon discovers that Dow wasnt even a drunk -- it was all an act. But why? And what does it have to do with a heated town hall meeting about fishing rights and paternity suits? The more Jane digs, the more confused she gets. Only two things are certain: Nothing is what it seems; and the whole town is in each other's business. But it's not until Jane impulsively hops on a boat with the killer -- a boat that suddenly heads out to sea -- that things become downright dangerous . . .

As she proved in The Hungry Ocean, no one knows the sea like Linda Greenlaw. And as she proved in The Lobster Chronicles, no one has a better way with the telling details of Maine village life. This new mystery series features everything readers want: a great setting, wonderful characters, an authentic and original detective -- and a story that will keep them on the edge of their seats.

Green Haven, Maine, is as far from the heat and violence of her past as Jane Bunker could hope for. When she trades in her career as a big-city homicide detective for a new job as a marine insurance investigator, Jane thinks that a fresh start in this sleepy seaside town will finally allow her the peace and quiet that she’s been craving.

But when the town drunk washes up on shore - with the back of his head smashed in - Jane realizes that Green Haven is not the quaint sanctuary she’d thought it was. The townspeople don’t think the tragedy is anything more than a drunk’s long walk off a short pier, but once Jane discovers the sordid details of the dead man’s past, it occurs to her that this just might be one local problem she knows a lot about, from her former life in Miami.

And down there they call it murder.

Unable to resist the lure of one last investigation, Jane makes it her business to find some answers. Though normally a woman of few words, Jane manages to talk herself into every corner of Green Haven, and in a small town like this, it isn’t long before the wrong person finds out that she’s been asking the right questions. In Green Haven, all answers lead to the ocean - and when Jane finds herself at sea, in the ferocious grip of an almost perfect storm, she has the chilling realization that her life may well be in the hands of the very murderer whom she’s been seeking.

Filled with an off-the-wall cast of eccentric characters headed by the unstoppable (and relentlessly thrifty) Jane Bunker herself, Slipknot is a riveting fiction debut made truly outstanding by Greenlaw’s inimitable voice, unerring ear for all things maritime, and talent for combining humor with edge-of-your-seat suspense.

Entertainment Weekly

Greenlaw, author of nonfiction best-sellers such as The Lobster Chronicles, has no trouble finding her sea legs in . . . this swifty paced yarn. (B+)

After a brief but memorable appearance in Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm brought her to our attention, captain Linda Greenlaw has since hooked readers with her own fascinating seafaring stories.