Depth of Deception

Depth of Deception begins with the report of a boating disaster near the site of the famed sinking of the Titanic, but when it is investigated, the only thing the rescue team discovers is an beautiful, unconscious young woman, half frozen to death and floating on a wooden deck chair, dressed in an old fashioned gown and gripping a teddy bear. Despite these deadly circumstances, she lives although she has amnesia and is simply called "Myra" because of the locket that was found around her neck. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world in England, an insurance investigator named Callum Toughill is called in by Lloyd's of London to look into the disappearance of a very expensive brooch. The kicker is that the brooch was taken from the murder scene of Agatha Gilcrest which occurred in the early 1900's, a murder investigated by none other than Callum's grandfather and was eventually the cause of his public humiliation and ruin as a police officer. To make matters more strange, it is suspected that this brooch went down with the Titanic.

When Myra regains consciousness, she is terribly confused and insists she was a passenger on the Titanic, so her psychologist, Natalie, reaches out to a Titanic survivor named Edward Hoffman in an attempt to recreate the last evening on the ship to draw her out as a fraud or a lunatic. When Myra not only recalls the evening's events correctly, but also remembers specifics about Edward himself, things get even more peculiar.

Edward is quite confused about Myra and her intentions, but her appearance starts to make him doubt the life he has known all of the years since the Titanic accident. In the meantime, the deeper Toughill digs into Gilcrest's murder, the more he realizes that it was a huge cover-up. As the bodies begin piling up on both sides of the pond, Calllum, Edward and Myra find themselves thrown together in a mystery that not only spans across the miles, but also across the years.

I really enjoyed Depth of Deception. It was excellently written, although a tiny bit pretentious at times. However, I chalk this up to the fact that author Alexander Galant stayed in character as far as speech and colloquialism, depending on whether the scene was taking place in America or Europe. I will say that there are a lot of characters in this book and it can get a bit confusing, and also, I have been intentionally vague in this review so as not to spoil any surprises. That being said, it's a fun story with a good mystery and though I was able to predict who the culprits were, the ending had a nice twist to it that I really liked. I would definitely read Alexander Galant again and I look forward to his next novel, Bloody Mary Kelly, releasing in 2013.