In Koelsch’s imaginative, plausible suspense novel, scientists around the world are baffled when hundreds of dolphins beach themselves in Texas, Virginia, and Mozambique, numbers far greater than ever previously observed. Angela Clarke, the national director of Marine Mammal Health and Stranding, a division of the Department of Commerce, flies to Galveston to investigate the Unusual Mortality Event there. Angela is unaware that the mass deaths are not a shock to her boss, Rear Adm. Lawrence Collins, an undersecretary of Commerce who’s involved with the covert government cabal known as THE FEW. Collins’s group has deployed CONCH, an advanced sonar system to enhance America’s homeland security against terrorist attack from underwater. While the admiral knows that the dolphin strandings are connected to CONCH, the truth is kept from Angela, who races to gather and analyze data from all three UME sites so that she can learn enough to forestall a fourth. Fans of the film The Day of the Dolphin will enjoy this unusual and intelligent thriller. (BookLife)