Beneath the surface A novel

Rouda's background in business reporting and real estate undergirds her pitch-black latest tale of psychological suspense (after 2022's Somebody's Home). On a steamy summer Friday, Orange County's wealthiest citizen, Richard Kingsley, takes his viperous family on a weekend cruise to Catalina on his luxury yacht. Richard's sons, John and Ted, are both gunning to be named the successor to their father's massive real estate empire. Their wives--Rachel, a lawyer, and Paige, an inveterate do-gooder--are thirsting for power by proxy, putting them at odds with Richard's fourth wife and black-sheep daughter, the latter of whom crashes the cruise at the last minute. Naturally, each family member harbors grim secrets. As a raging storm rocks the yacht over one of the Pacific's deepest trenches, those secrets start to come out, launching a ruthless game for control of the company. Alternating points of view among family members, Rouda successfully conveys the corrupting influence of excessive wealth, but her characters are paper-thin, and her themes a bit superficial. This Succession meets Agatha Christie mash-up fails to stay afloat. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Sept.)

When the wealthy patriarch of a family business invites his children on a trip from Newport Beach to Catalina Island aboard his new yacht, Rouda fans will know to buckle their seat belts. John and Ted Kingsley have hated each other for years, their mutual antipathy sharpened by John's success in forcing Ted out of Kingsley Global Enterprises a few years ago. So both they and their wives--John's wife, ruthless lawyer Rachel, and Paige, a successful Orange County food-bank fundraiser who used to work alongside Ted before he was bounced--are truly dismayed to learn that the invitation from Richard Kingsley, whom John identifies as "one of Southern California's biggest sinners," and Serena Kingsley, his fifth wife, for an overnight cruise aboard their yacht, Splendid Seas, includes all four of them. In fact, it's even worse, as they realize when Sibley, the bad-girl sister they haven't thought about for years, drops into the party with her boyfriend, knife-carrying creep Colson Kelly. Richard's goal of observing his children individually and interactively in order to decide whom to appoint as Kingsley CEO when he steps down provides a nominal structure for the journey, but really, it's all about the dish. Although the characters are paper-thin, Rouda spikes the voyage with so many excruciating and perfectly timed revelations about John and Ted and Sibley and Serena and Richard that readers will be hugging themselves in anticipation, satisfaction, and relief that this isn't their family. When long-deferred violence finally breaks out, they may be divided between shock and a sense of anticlimax. No matter: The hits keep on coming. King Lear goes to the beach. Yes. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.