High Seas Darkness — Burr B. Anderson

A vicious sex crime on a luxury cruise liner brings private maritime investigator Brick Morgan face-to-face with an old flame-and a deadly terrorist plot that threatens an entire fleet of cruise ships. Morgan must stop the radical fundamentalists, but his attempts to alert the FBI and Homeland Security run up against a political battle brewing between American loyalists and an American president whose weak stance on terror opened the door for this series of chemical attacks by radical religious insurgents. The United States government readies to sink the Matisse to protect the populace from the attack and bury the truth about the severity of the ongoing War on Terror. Meanwhile, Morgan and his specialized team-a seductive female security chief with her eye on Morgan, a belligerent ex-Gurkha looking to sabotage the investigation, and a mysterious and exotic computer hacker-are in a race against the clock to track the radical fundamentalists and break down the clues left by a perverted Peeping Tom crew member, an Islamic zealot seeking revenge, and the machinations of Washington DC politicos. Political intrigue, forensic clues, and Brick Morgan's personal and professional histories collide in a bullet-ridden climax, forcing him to choose between the life of the woman he loves or the lives of thousands...