1973 Dodd Mead hardcover, Patrick Buchanan ( A Murder of Crows). When a novel opens with a naked redhead jumping into a shark infested swimming pool, it kind of grabs your attention. The pace hardly lets up through this short but snappy bit of hard-boiled sun-drenched private eye fun. The above scene met unlicensed PI's Ben Shock and Charity Tucker as they pulled into their new client's home in the sleepy, early 70's Gulf Coast town of Singing River, Mississippi. Their assignment, they find out while drying out from a futile rescue attempt, is to look into a rash of accidents on the Dantzler family's pioneering offshore oil platform. After a trip to the platform and another suspicious death, they find themselves investigating more than delayed schedules and improperly mixed drilling mud.c- Amazon review by avoraciousreader