Trusting Viktor

December 9, 2013
With more twists and turns than a roller-coaster, Mims’s second outing for Cleo Cooper (after 2013’s Hiding Gladys) has the geologist risking her life savings on a new gas well off the shore of North Carolina. During Cleo’s first night aboard the drill ship Magellan, she goes to investigate a curious item on deck and is attacked and almost raped by an unknown assailant. Soon afterward, crewmember Nuvuk Hunter’s dead body is discovered floating in the water, causing Cleo to wonder if he was her attacker. Cleo, now under police suspicion for Nuvuk’s death, finds one bright spot onboard the Magellan: handsome geologist Victor Kozlov, who previously saved her from a diving mishap. The mystery deepens when the mysterious item proves to have come from a sunken German U-boat. Mims ably transforms the dirty, unglamorous business of well drilling into a breezily entertaining whodunit. Agent: Kimberley Cameron, Kimberley Cameron & Associates.

December 1, 2013
Underwater intrigue, offshore drilling and onshore romance enliven a scientist's days and nights. When Russian student Viktor Kozlov rescues geologist Cleo Cooper from a scuba dive gone wrong, she lets him spend the night with her. Although he's 12 years younger than her, he's also attractive, eager and knowledgeable about her subject of expertise. Dismissing him as a one-night stand, Cleo escapes with relief to her consulting job aboard the Magellan, an exploration drill ship searching for natural gas for a company in which Cleo and her ex-husband, Bud, are both investors. She's just retrieved a strange circular object from a remotely operated vehicle when a man attacks her. She awakens with no knowledge of how she got away from him or what happened to her attacker, whose body soon washes up on shore. The longer Cleo remains aboard the Magellan, the more questions she has about Bud's role in her attacker's death and about Viktor, who's helping her find an undersea clue to missing treasure. Cleo ultimately learns where her trust should lie in a mystery long on technical detail and short on realism. Although geologist Mims (Hiding Gladys, 2013) writes with professional authority, she could have established her heroine as a specialist in a man's world without burdening readers with so many scientific details--or undercutting Cleo's self-sufficiency by obliging her to be rescued again and again.

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