The Bottom Line: Leng’s world of sunken secrets moves fast, hits hard and lands every shot.
The second installment in David R. Leng’s Echoes of Fortune series deepens the mythology of lost American civil war secrets while plunging its characters into far more perilous waters. What begins as a Thanksgiving dive vacation for three Americans quickly turns into a deadly struggle against history itself.
Shadows Over Cozumel finds historian Jack Sullivan, Smithsonian curator Emma Wilson, and Navy engineer Steve Johnson reunited for a Caribbean dive. But when their dive to the Del Rio, a Confederate blockade runner lost in 1865, the trio finds something far more dangerous than treasure. Inside the ship’s sealed captain’s quarters, Jack retrieves a brass tube containing documents so explosive they could rewrite the past: operational orders for a Confederate government-in-exile, references to assassination plots against Union leaders, and evidence of Swiss gold accounts that bankrolled post-war empires still powerful today.
A sleek black yacht shadows their every move. Aboard are operatives under the command of Colonel William Hathaway, a descendant of Confederates whose generational wealth funds a private army of special forces. Hathaway’s mission is to erase the evidence and anyone who’s seen it. Leng doesn’t waste time getting too deep into Hathaway’s future ambitions, but we get just enough to feel the urgency of the moment at hand.
What follows is a relentless chase from the reefs of Cozumel to the rooftops of Veracruz. It’s safe to say that no character, no matter how central to the series, is truly safe. Leng’s underwater sequences shimmer with claustrophobic beauty, while his command of pacing turns every page into a tightening coil. The chemistry between Jack and Emma remains the series’ emotional anchor. Steve’s steady pragmatism grounds the chaos, giving the team the texture of a found family forged under fire.
While The Search for Braddock’s Lost Gold introduced Jack’s obsession with lost treasure and lost love, Shadows Over Cozumel confronts the cost of knowing too much. Leng layers action with questions about legacy, power, and the ethics of uncovering buried truths. The result is both an expansion and an evolution: higher stakes, deeper emotions and a faster pace.
A quick, fast-paced read, Shadows Over Cozumel sets the stage for the series’ third book
