The Sentinels

In 1864 the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley made naval history -- it became the first underwater vessel ever to blow up an enemy ship. But there probably wasnt much time to celebrate. The Hunley sank with its crew of eight before it returned to port. For the next 130 years few people other than Civil War buffs gave the Hunley much thought. Then, in 1994, attacks on opulent yachts and unsolved murders in Charleston, South Carolina, involve U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Eric Ashby in a search for answers to clues that increasingly point to a ghostly Confederate submarine still fighting more than a century after the Civil War. Thwarted by the Charleston police, who logically conclude that the search for murderers who died in the 1860s is quite nonsensical and not worth the time, Ashby -- with the intuitive help of his mystical girlfriend -- follows the leads that solve the murders and hence undergoes a transformation of his personal attitude to the passing of time. And in the process he comes to a vision of his own -- that his salvation in a despairing world lies, to a great extent, within his own power; and if he exerts that power, external help will be granted to him.The Sentinels is a witty and glitteringly intelligent first novel from a distinguished author who now proves that he is an irresistibly erudite practitioner of the art of fiction.