Shark Bait Paperback - 2018

My fiction-writing career owes it 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. I was working for a newspaper covering the treasure hunt. The controversy over the salvage got hot at times and I thought there might be a book based on the story. I 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 release of "Bluefin Blues," Clive called and said a spin-off from the Dirk Pitt series was in the works. It would be called the NUMA Files and he wondered if I would be interested in tackling the job. I took on the writing of "Serpent" which brought into being Kurt Austin and the NUMA Special Assignments Team. Austin had some carry-over from Soc, and another team member, Paul Trout, had been born on Cape Cod. The book made The New York Times bestseller list, as did every one of seven NUMA Files that followed, including "Polar Shift," which bumped "The Da Vinci Code" for first place. After eight NUMA Files I went back to writing solo. I wrote an adventure book entitled, "The Emerald Scepter," which introduced a new hero, Matinicus "Matt" Hawkins. In 2013, I brought Soc back again in a seventh Socarides book entitled, "Grey Lady." After that book I wrote a sequel to the first Matt Hawkins book, entitled, "The Minoan Cipher," which was nominated for a Thriller award in the Best Paperback category for 2017 by the International Thriller Writers. The eighth Soc book, "Shark Bait," incorporates the aforementioned story of the Whydah, its doomed captain Samuel Bellamy, and his lover, Mary Hallett. My wife Christi and I live on Cape Cod where she works as a financial advisor. We share a circa 1865 farmhouse with two cats. We have three children and seven granddaughters. To learn more about Paul Kemprecos, check out his website at www.paulkemprecos.com.