Fathoms: A Seaside Monster Murder Mystery Novel
Fathoms: A Seaside Monster Murder Mystery Novel
by KJ McQuade
Released May 15, 2025
Ellis Ward is no detective.
His father was, until dear old dad forgot his own mantra and went in the East Hook water to save a kid, and didn't come back out. Ellis is an artist, art student really, one painting away from graduating into a future as foggy as his hometown, a longstanding Maine seaside tourist stop famous for its mostly fictitious history of monsters and shipwrecks. But when he goes back home for his friend's funeral, things are too strange to ignore.
Animals keep dropping dead all around him, and someone is using the thick, ever-present mist to vandalize local landmarks. His old friends are partying with harder drugs than he remembers, and hanging with people wearing prosthetic shrimp pincers in their mouths. But he can't leave home and finish his last painting, as his art keeps popping up in connection to the vandals, even linking him to his friend's death. Ellis has to channel his father and figure out what is really going on in the water off of East Hook, without meeting the same end.
Born and raised in Maine but has called many places home since. Now settled in Boston with his family, where he writes his quirky murder stories with a puggle sleeping over each shoulder.
