Rogue Wave — Susan Dunlap

SEA OF SUSPICION

From her sunny La Jolla beach house replete with a fabulously handsome gourmet chef, feisty private detective Kiernan O'Shaughnessy embarks on one of her strangest cases to date. This one takes her up the Coast to Big Sur fogs . . . and to the mists enshrouding her own past as disgraced medical examiner. From the hit-and-run "accident" that left a flamboyant artist bizarrely brain damaged to the baffling "drowning" of an enigmatic deckhand, all clues point to a major cover-up.

In digging up the murky connections between a fiery-haired femme fatale captain of a chartered fishing boat, a slew of greed-ridden oilmen, a bunch of fanatical environmentalists and Alaskan adventurers, Kiernan is forced to confront her ex-lover, now the acting coroner of San Francisco -- as well as the skeletons in both their closets...