The Memory of Eva Ryker - by Donald Stanwood (Paperback)

About the Book

An eccentric billionaire, a best-selling author, and a beautiful, self-destructive woman: three lives linked by the tragic sinking of the Titanic April 11, 1912: The gala sailing out of Southampton of White Star Lines peerless luxury liner, the R.M.S. Titanic. Among the dazzling, doomed names on the passenger list for this, the Titanic's maiden voyage, is Clair August Ryker, the lovely and dissolute wife of billionaire industrialist William Ryker, and her ten-year-old daughter, Eva. Also present is a young couple, obviously newlyweds, the Eddingtons, who are drawn to Clair and her child. Beneath the decks, in the cargo hold, is a crate marked Ryker Industries. November 30, 1941: In Honolulu, the apparently accidental death of tourist Albert Klein and the brutal murder of his wife confound the promising career of a rookie cop. Norman Hall will never be able to forget the grisly sight of the dismembered body of Martha Klein. Decades later, a best-selling author, he is still haunted. What could possibly link these events? A faded film, capturing the sunny pleasures of a ship-board party, and a terrifying recording of a voice describing a night of darkest infamy and moral outrage? It is Norman Hall's assignment, fifty years after the sinking of the Titanic, to cover for World Magazine William Ryker's multimillion-dollar salvage expedition to recover the lost riches of the Titanic. Norman Hall is determined to understand the reclusive billionaire's motives for the expedition, but as he delves deeper into the past, he finds himself in grave danger. To solve the mystery, he must somehow unlock the memory of the deeply troubled Eva Ryker.

Book Synopsis

An eccentric billionaire, a best-selling author, and a beautiful, self-destructive woman: three lives linked by the tragic sinking of the Titanic

April 11, 1912: The gala sailing out of Southampton of White Star Line's peerless luxury liner, the R.M.S. Titanic. Among the dazzling, doomed names on the passenger list for this, the Titanic's maiden voyage, is Clair August Ryker, the lovely and dissolute wife of billionaire industrialist William Ryker, and her ten-year-old daughter, Eva. Also present is a young couple, obviously newlyweds, the Eddingtons, who are drawn to Clair and her child. Beneath the decks, in the cargo hold, is a crate marked Ryker Industries.

November 30, 1941: In Honolulu, the apparently accidental death of tourist Albert Klein and the brutal murder of his wife confound the promising career of a rookie cop. Norman Hall will never be able to forget the grisly sight of the dismembered body of Martha Klein. Decades later, a best-selling author, he is still haunted.

What could possibly link these events? A faded film, capturing the sunny pleasures of a ship-board party, and a terrifying recording of a voice describing a night of darkest infamy and moral outrage?

It is Norman Hall's assignment, fifty years after the sinking of the Titanic, to cover for World Magazine William Ryker's multimillion-dollar salvage expedition to recover the lost riches of the Titanic. Norman Hall is determined to understand the reclusive billionaire's motives for the expedition, but as he delves deeper into the past, he finds himself in grave danger. To solve the mystery, he must somehow unlock the memory of the deeply troubled Eva Ryker.

Review Quotes

"A sweetheart of a thriller . . . [Donald Stanwood] pulls an incredibly tangled story along as smooth as an ocean liner weighing anchor. . . . For people who want a good read, The Memory of Eva Ryker is one of the recent best." --The New York Times Book Review

"Sheer entertainment, expertly done . . . A glittering thread of malice and mystery." --Cosmopolitan

"A sure-fire combination of themes takes up where A Night to Remember and Raise the Titanic left off. . . . In a slick, fast-paced, and adroitly plotted suspense story, Stanwood brings together the strands of the Titanic disaster, including a starkly graphic re-creation of the ship's last minutes." --Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Donald Stanwood is the author of two novels. His first, The Memory of Eva Ryker, was published in 1978 to great acclaim, hitting the Publishers Weekly bestseller list, garnering an Edgar Award nomination, and boasting reprints in several languages. In 1980, Warner Bros and Irwin Allen produced it as a three-hour TV-movie for CBS starring Natalie Wood and Robert Foxworth. Stanwood has been a guest lecturer at University of California at Fullerton and University of California at Irvine, and is a member of an Orange County writers' critique group whose past members include Jo-Ann Mapson, T. Jefferson Parker, and Elizabeth George. He currently lives in Stanton, California.