My Favorite Detective Stories

Paul Kemprecos' fiction-writing career owes its start to the bad navigation of an 18th-century pirate. For it was in 1717 that a ship named Whydah went aground off Cape Cod, reportedly carrying a fabulous treasure. Samuel Bellamy, the ship's captain, was drowned along with most of the crew. In the 1980s, three salvage groups went head-to-head, competing to find the wreck. He was working for a newspaper covering the treasure hunt. The controversy over the salvage got hot at times, and he thought there might be a book based on the story. He developed my own detective, an ex-cop, diver, fisherman, and PI named Aristotle "Soc" Socarides. He was more philosophical than hard-boiled. His first appearance was in "Cool Blue Tomb," which won the Shamus Award for Best Paperback novel. After many years in the newspaper business, I turned to writing fiction and churned out five more books in the series. Clive Cussler blurbed: "There can be no better mystery writer in America than Paul Kemprecos." Several months after the