Precipice by Tom Savage

I am catching up on a bunch of books that I have read over the last two weeks. Alot of travel means I finished six! Most in the “light reading” category. Like . It was left at my house by Alex’s father who consumes pulp detective novels like an Irishman and his Guiness. I tend to like suspense/detective novels that take place somewhere specific and include alot of local color. That way I can tell myself that part of the read is “educational” instead of pure fluff like an episode of . Oh, well enough schocking of my Amazon Associates links, lets get to the book.

Precipice is Tom Savage’s first book. He was raised in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and this debut is set there. There is something slightly Jimmy Buffet about the characters. Very son of a son of a sailor. The idle rich and their sailboats. The plot has some nice twists to it though. Not completely transparent from the start. The story starts out simply enough as here are these nice rich people enjoying paradise. Kay, the rich widower, her second husband Adam, and her daughter (from the first marriage) Elle. Their nanny suddenly disappears as does Adam’s deck hand on his sailing yacht. Into this gap comes a new deck hand and a new bored Harvard daughter of rich east coast money who takes the nanny job (Diana). As the plot goes on you find out that everyone has a past and everyone has an angle to be in this place at this time and it is not all as random as it may seem. Savage keeps you guessing almost to the end. Who is allied with who and what are the motivations. Of course there is a fair dose of killing and robbery along the way. And the necessary childhood damage that follows people around. On my one to 10 scale for detective novels, this one gets a 7. I may even read it again.