The Stolen Coast

Adrift in a sleepy coastal Massachusetts town, a man who ferries fugitives by day gets twisted up in a plot to pilfer diamonds in a heist novel that infuses Elmore Leonard and Casablanca. Jack might be a polished, Harvard-educated lawyer on paper, but everyone in the down-at-the-heels, if picturesque, village of Onset, Massachusetts, knows his real job: moving around people on the run from powerful enemies. Except for the occasional fumble, the family business-co-managed with his father, a retired spy-is smooth sailing, filling up Onset's holiday homes during the town's long, drowsy off-season. But when Elena, Jack's enigmatic former flame-and former client-fugitive-makes an unexpected return to town, wealthy fiancé in tow, her arrival upends Jack's routine existence. Elena, after all, doesn't go anywhere without a scheme in mind, and it isn't long before Jack finds himself enmeshed in her latest hustle: intercepting millions of dollars' worth of raw diamonds before they're shipped overseas. With sharp wit and stylish prose, CrimeReads editor in chief Dwyer Murphy serves up an irresistible page-turner as full of heart as it is of drama.

Dwyer Murphy is the editor-in-chief of Crime Reads, Literary Hub's crime fiction vertical and the world's most popular destination for thriller readers. He practised law at Debevoise and Plimpton in New York City, where he was a litigator, and served as editor of the Columbia Law Review. He was previously an Emerging Writer Fellow at the Centre for Fiction.