When an heiress disappears from her superyacht and security footage shows her getting pushed, the main suspect has to prove her innocence in this thrilling mystery at sea told in reverse chronological order, perfect for fans of Karen McManus and Genuine Fraud.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Jan Gangsei’s Dead Below Deck, which is out November 19th 2024.
It was supposed to be the best-ever girls’ trip: five days, four friends, one luxury yacht, no parents. But on the final night, as the yacht cruised the deep and dark waters between Florida and Grand Cayman, eighteen-year-old heiress Giselle vanished. She’s nowhere to be found the next morning even after a frantic search, until security footage surfaces . . . showing Maggie pushing her overboard.
But Maggie has no memory of what happened. All she knows is that she woke up with a throbbing headache, thousands of dollars in cash in her safe, a passport that isn’t hers, and Giselle’s diary. And while Maggie had her own reasons to want Giselle dead, so did everyone else on board: jealous Viv, calculating Emi, even some members of the staff.
What really went down on the top deck that night? Maggie will have to work her way backward to uncover the secrets that everyone—even Giselle—kept below deck or she’s dead in the water.
Jan Gangsei crafts a compulsively readable tale of privilege, family, and identity wrapped in a wholly original mystery that will keep readers on the edges of their seats until the final twist.
DAY 5
APRIL 16—LATE MORNING
Latitude, longitude: 19.952696, -82.953878
80 nautical miles off the coast of Grand Cayman
What have I done?
“Don’t leave this room.” The first mate releases the arm he’s been using to keep me steady on the long, vertigo-inducing walk back to my stateroom from The Escape’s bridge, where I sat and listened in shock as Captain Hjelkrem radioed the Coast Guard to report Giselle overboard. Overboard. This can’t be real. Can it? My pounding hangover is suddenly gone, replaced by something else. Something far worse. Confusion. Disbelief. Horror.
I nod, throat tight, doing my best to stay upright as the Haverford family’s yacht thuds across the churning waves. “I won’t,” I manage to croak out. Where would I go, anyway?
We’re in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, miles from shore. There’s nowhere to go except straight down into the water.
I’m struck with a horrifying image of Giselle, hair floating on the surface as she disappears beneath the dark waves. A slender hand, reaching out and grasping the empty air for help that isn’t coming.
A memory? Or just my imagination?
Does it even matter?
Because Giselle is gone, and I’m to blame.
My eyes well with tears.
The first mate backs into the hallway with a sad shake of his head and clicks the door shut. An eerie silence fills the room, save for the sound of my ragged breathing. I am completely and utterly alone, trapped in a prison of my own making.
I sink onto the edge of my bed, staring in disbelief at my trembling hands. Hands I thought I knew. Pale and freckled. Long fingers, thick like Mom’s. Chewed-down nails. I try to picture these hands, placed squarely on Giselle’s back, and I don’t know what to think.
What if they were right about me? What if I’ll do anything to get what I want?
The mahogany walls of my stateroom begin to close in around me like a fist squeezing shut. In less than two hours we’ll arrive in Grand Cayman, where Giselle’s family—and the police—will be waiting. For me.
I try my best to conjure up an image of what went down on the top deck last night. But there’s nothing. Just a black hole where a memory should be, and a persistent, nagging guilt that chews at my core. An unspoken truth, gnawing me from the inside out.
We take a wave, hard, and the Egyptian cotton robe next to my bed sways ominously on its gold hook. Another wave and the tray of cold coffee and stale croissants on my nightstand crashes to the floor. I jolt, heart pounding against my ribcage like a spooked horse trying to bust free of its stall. Something inside me breaks along with the coffee cup; the last bit of hope that this has all been a bad dream. That I’ll wake up and discover Giselle reclining on a lounger under the bright blue Caribbean sky, green eyes dancing with mischief, a dazzling smile lighting up her suntanned face.
Tears roll down my cheeks as the cold reality of what’s happened sinks in. I swipe them away and hobble to the veranda in search of air, wincing with each step on my freshly bandaged foot. I fix my eyes on the distant horizon, a curved line of deep blue that divides the sky from ocean, life from death. It’s the only thing keeping me oriented now that up has swapped places with down, left with right.
A flurry of activity and voices erupt on the deck above me. I can hear the other girls, their words carrying on the breeze from the open balcony doors of the primary suite. I strain to listen, hoping desperately for good news. Some sort of miracle. Reports of a fishing boat that happened by and plucked Giselle from the deep water, and now she’s wrapped in a thick towel drinking warm coffee from a metal thermos with a gruff old fisherman, laughing and plotting her revenge.
“Look at these Polaroids. I can’t believe she kept them,” I hear Vivian say. “Oh, I remember this. See?” Her voice cracks. “Last year when we dressed like M&M’s for Spring Spirit Week. Giselle had to be different and be a peanut one, and—” She chokes back a sob.
“They’ll find her, Viv,” Emi says. “They have to. She’s Giselle Haverford. I bet every Coast Guard boat and helicopter in a hundred-mile radius is out there now, circling the last place her cell phone pinged.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Vivian sniffles. “We can’t give up hope. She’s always been so strong. If anyone could survive this, it’s Giselle.”
I want to shout up to them, tell them how sorry I am. How I’d do anything—anything—to make this right. But the words sound hollow, even in my own mind. I can’t make this right. Maybe if I hadn’t always been so busy trying to make things right, this never would have happened in the first place.
“I have her necklace,” Vivian says, her voice cracking again, and I picture the gold heart-locket necklace that always dangled from Giselle’s neck. The crew found it this morning, broken and snagged on the dented third-deck railing. Ripped away as she’d tumbled into the water from the deck above.
I swallow hard to keep myself from throwing up.
“Let’s go upstairs and start the vigil,” Emi says.
“What about Maggie?” Vivian asks, and my back stiffens at my name.
Emi scoffs. “What about her?”
“Never mind,” Vivian says. “I don’t know what I meant. I guess I’m still in shock. I can’t believe she’d do something like this. I liked Maggie, you know?”
“Yeah, well, so did Giselle,” Emi answers. “And look how that worked out.”
An automatic bubble of annoyance springs up in my chest, because of course Emi would say that. She’s never liked me. But I push it back down, along with a deep sense of shame. Because this time, Emi’s right.
“She really had me fooled,” Vivian says, then pauses. “Hey, what are you looking for?”
“Giselle’s journal,” Emi answers. “I saw her put it under here, and now it’s gone.”
Icy terror spikes through my veins.
The journal!
I hurry back into my room, heart stuttering as their voices fade away, and punch in the combination to the small safe in my closet. The metal door springs open like an old-fashioned jack-in-the-box, minus the creepy clown. I jolt back in horror.
There’s the journal, still locked tight, just like it was when I stuffed it inside two days ago. It sits right on top of two freshly bundled stacks of hundred-dollar bills that I also shouldn’t have. The corner of a fake passport pokes out from beneath the cash.
And underneath that, a letter written on elegant cream linen stationery, carefully folded in thirds, tucked into a matching envelope with a broken wax seal. If only I had left that stupid thing alone. Now it sits there like a bomb on its final countdown to detonation.
Ticktock. Ticktock.
My head feels like it’s detached from my body and is floating away. A tiny balloon in the big blue sky. A tiny person in the big, wide ocean. I should dump this all overboard. Destroy the evidence.
But I can’t. Not without knowing what Giselle wrote.
I yank the journal from the safe. The pink sequined cover is rough against my palms, and I try to imagine Giselle buying this thing on purpose. It reminds me of something that twelve-year-old me would have picked up at a buy-three-get-three-free sale at Claire’s. Back when I’d save up my chore money to get myself some cheap lip gloss, scrunchies, and unicorn jewelry that turned my skin green after three days.
I slump onto the bed, journal dropping onto my lap, and put my head in my hands.
I wish I could go back in time. Be the person I used to be.
Before Giselle. Before Prep. Before this trip. Riding my bike up and down the country roads, slaying imaginary dragons with my foam sword and plastic shield, fighting evil to protect my kingdom. Stretched out in the back of my truck with Allison, fingers entwined, the starlit sky above us a canvas of infinite possibilities. The places we’d go. The people we’d become.
I don’t know you anymore, Allison said when I ran into her last fall, the first time I’d seen her in months. Tears shimmered in her blue-green eyes. You’ve changed. The hair, the clothes . . . everything. You’ve become a totally different person.
Maybe I have. But people don’t really change overnight, do they? It happens in degrees, so small you barely realize what’s going on. Until before you know it, that foam sword is shoved away in the closet, dented and chipped, lost beneath the broken Barbie dolls and clothes that don’t fit anymore. And the one person you swore you’d never be without is somewhere, alone, on the other side of a wide ocean.
Or what if we don’t really change at all? What if growing up is little more than a peeling away of our protective layers, bit by bit, to get at our true selves?
What if this is who I really am?
A liar.
A thief.
A killer.
I tug at the journal’s lock, desperate for answers. It doesn’t give. I grit my teeth in frustration. There has to be some way to get this open.
Wait! The bobby pins Emi used to secure my updo back in Nassau . . .
I rush into the bathroom, ignoring the stabbing pain in my foot, and grab one from the discarded pile on the counter. The thin metal easily yields as I bend the pin open. I snap it in half and peel away the plastic coating, then sit on my bed and shove both points into the lock.
Scrape, twist, scrape, twist.
Nothing happens.
I wiggle the pins harder, sweat beading along my hairline as
I struggle to find the internal latch.
Scrape, twist, scrape, twist.
I’m about to give up when it finally catches. The lock pops open with a click, and I blow out an anxious breath. I press the journal open and start to read.
Dear Mom . . .
Mom? I swallow down the lump in my throat. I shouldn’t be invading Giselle’s private thoughts like this. Haven’t I done enough already? But no, I need to carry on. I need to know what Giselle knew.
Who she told.
