Trial by Sea: A Cruise Ship Courtroom Drama

About this book:

When high-powered defense attorney Daniel Knox is ordered onto the *Oceanic Apex* for a mandatory vacation, he trades the Manhattan courthouse for a floating city of four thousand souls—where the only law is the captain's, and the nearest police force is five hundred miles away. His unwanted seatmate in this gilded cage is Chief Security Officer Marcus Brooks, a former Chicago homicide detective who runs the ship's security like a precinct and views every lawyer as trouble waiting to happen.

The uneasy truce shatters when venture capitalist Julian Thorne turns up dead in his locked suite on the first night, a shattered glass and an open balcony door the only witnesses. With no forensics lab, no backup, and a passenger list packed with Thorne's enemies—including the rival industrialist he publicly threatened at dinner—Brooks needs Knox's legal mind to navigate a murder investigation where every suspect has an alibi, every motive is buried in sealed court documents, and the crime scene is drifting further from jurisdiction with every nautical mile.

As a storm bears down and a second body drops, the *Apex* becomes a pressure cooker where corporate secrets, old vendettas, and deadly ambitions collide. Knox and Brooks must turn the grand ballroom into a courtroom and the crew into a jury—because in international waters, justice doesn't come from the bench. It comes from whoever survives long enough to deliver it.