The Bell in the Channel

Marine acoustician Dev Charron came to Bainbridge Island to record whales. His hydrophone caught something else: a bronze bell tolling underwater at 2:14 in the morning, twice a week, from the direction of a ferry that went down in 1953. Retired ferry engineer Marisol Vargas knows that signal. Her father wrote it in a notebook during Prohibition—a bell used to guide rum-runners through the channel. Someone has recovered it, wired it to a timer, and is diving the old wreck for salvage. When a diver surfaces dead in fifty feet of cold water, Dev and Marisol understand the bell isn't just a signal. It's a warning. And whoever is ringing it has already killed once to keep the salvage undocumented. A we solve murders mystery for readers who like their water cold and their history submerged.