Deadly Waters by Sam Phillips

About the book

Ed Thackeray has two motives for murdering Quinn Hartwig. One, he stands to inherit Quinn's position as executive vice president of Ocean State Bank. Two, the murder is the first in his and his pals' plan to assure their job security.

So, in the penthouse office of Boca Raton's Hartwig Building, Thackeray smashes Quinn's head in with a vase. This murder will get him his position. The next two murders will guarantee that he'll get to keep it.

Things are going as planned until Thackeray and his co-conspirator pals, the "boys", all senior officers of the bank, are unexpectedly confronted with an event that threatens exposure of their crime. Younger blood, in the form of financial consultant, Rick Cunningham, has been brought aboard to help the bank keep up with the times. Rick's suspicions are roused when he learns of the strange circumstances surrounding Quinn's death. Thackeray and the boys become aware of this and decide on a course of action. Rick, too, must die!

Recently re-located from Los Angeles, to escape the pain of his divorce, Rick begins to fall for the lovely Katherine Hartwig, the cousin of the bank's president, Big Earl Hartwig. Katherine's other brother, Fred, is murdered. She suspects the honesty-challenged Big Earl of committing the deed. He killed before, she asserts to Rick, murdering their grandfather in 1971 to gain control of the bank. To retain that control, slated under her grandfather's will to soon go to her and her brothers, if they are alive, she's convinced that one more murder is needed. Her own!

Captured, and about to be thrown into the sea from Thackeray's huge fishing boat, Katherine and Rick learn the truth. Thackeray and the boys murdered her brothers, and now intend to murder her, thwarting her grandfather's will by enabling Big Earl to retain control of the bank, a result that will assure continuation of Thackeray's and the boys long-held cushy jobs.

Rick and Katherine are about to be killed when Rick, with Katherine in tow, leaps overboard. Secured to a buoy, he shakes off Katherine's staggering confession that it was she who murdered her sexually abusive grandfather, and engages in a ferocious battle with Thackeray and the boys. With Katherine's help, he emerges victorious. Though saddened with the knowledge that she will be punished for her crime, this time he will not run away from love's complications.

This time he will stay and fight.

About the author

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1934, Phillips began his career as a banker during high school, serving as a messenger for a local banking institution. Within a year, he received his first promotion, to teller, beginning a rise in the industry that would one day see him as president and chief executive officer of a Miami, Florida Bank.

Upon his retirement from the industry, in 1987, Phillips took up writing, a subject he had found a penchant for while studying nights at the University of Virginia. He continued to write, mostly in the suspense/thriller genre with a little mystery and romance added to the mix. He flavors his books with personal experiences in the community banking industry (small, local institutions), where colorful characters murdered, embezzled, lied and cheated to gain that most prized of all possessions, money!

Phillips is a current member of the Mystery Writers of America, and is the South Florida Chapter's acting treasurer. His interest, other than writing, are golf and playing bridge with his kids on Saturday nights.