Devil and the Deep

April 25, 2016
In Walker’s gripping second Deep Six contemporary romantic thriller, six former Navy SEALs continue their search for the sunken treasure ship Santa Cristina off the waters of Wayfarer Island, located between Cuba and Key West. Handsome Brando Pallidino has carried on a long-distance friendship with oil heiress Madison Powers since the team rescued her from a hijacking three months earlier. Now she’s taking three teenage scholarship students to the Dry Tortugas on a camping trip and asks Bran whether he can visit them there. Mason McCarthy, a partner in the salvage operation, and historian Alexandra Merriweather sail with Bran to see Maddy, but stumble upon her kidnapping in progress. Obstacles multiply in a thriller that takes place in roughly 24 hours, with each chapter heading giving the exact time, allowing Walker (Hell or High Water) to move seamlessly to different characters’ points of view. Bran struggles to come to terms with his troubled family history, and his emotional complexity lends an intimate feel to the steamy sex scenes.

May 15, 2016
In Walker's second Deep Six series installment, following Hell or High Water (2015), Bran and Mason, two ex-SEAL team members turned deep-sea treasure hunters, go to the Dry Tortugasto see Maddy Powers, taking along doctoral student Alexandra (Alex) Merriweather. Maddy is working with three teen scholarship winners, and hoping to see Bran, with whom she has been carrying on an e-mail correspondence, while he is trying desperately to deny the attraction, for fear that he will unleash his abusive father's tendencies. Monosyllabic Mason is trying to ignore his attraction to Alex. They arrive to discover that a group of men is in the process of abducting Maddy, whose father is very rich. In the midst of the rescue effort, Maddy and Bran finally have glorious sex, deluding themselves into believing they're just going to be friends with benefits, and Alex decides to lose her virginity to Mason in one of the funniest scenes in romance fiction. Walker's plot is mere backdrop for the hilarious capture of two of the most commitment-phobic men imaginable in this thoroughly enjoyable adventure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)