It was when Julian “Tusker” Tusk, Depth Charge‘s protagonist, decided to undertake a deepwater dive to look for clues, even though another character had recently perished on just such a dive, that I considered if I would have been quite so brave. The easy answer was “no.”
Just How Deep?
The main reason for my lack of bravery would be the deep dive, and I began to wonder just how far I had ever been under water. I sorted through memories of snorkeling in different tropical sites, boogie boarding, and plenty of time swimming in lakes and pools to find examples of my courage to go deep. Despite a significant diversity, my activities were confined to the uppermost layers of water. Jumping off of the high dive as a child and going as deep as I could, my toes might have reached ten feet or so. I wondered if this was my personal best.
I’m not one who can easily equalize the pressure in my ears as I descend, and I continued to search my memory for any possible times I had muscled through this discomfort, exceptions that would extend this admittedly modest depth. I came up empty.
Now that the wheels of my biological mind were spinning, though, I continued to follow the trail of my aquatic experience. I know that my parents and grandparents had not done SCUBA, despite the fact that we always seemed to be watching something about Jacques Cousteau on TV when I was a kid. I realized that I would need to travel very far back, through Tiktaalik—the link between fish and tetrapods—and into the Devonian to my fish ancestors to find any deep water experience in my family. Suffice it to say, I, and my general lineage, are decidedly terrestrial.
Enter Depth Charge
Luckily, Depth Charge provided me with an alternative to a seance with early fishes. It plunks its characters into the midst of a historical mystery and follows them on a host of adventures. And we all—characters and readers—get to dive deep.
As we head down the water column off the coast of Sri Lanka, the subtleties of diving and the experience of exploring an underwater wreck are believable and fascinating. Absent are the quick and cliche knife-fight scenes that are hastily thrown into Bond-esque adventures for a cheap thrill. Depth Charge takes us into the depths with an experienced diver.
At Home With Diving
Heaton, not only the much-loved co-host of The Grey Nato podcast and the reigning dive watch guru, is an experienced diver who can take readers on an adventure with authority. The course of the dives in the book is punctuated with the actual constraints of diving, like the “blow down” and necessary decompression stops of deep-water experiences. Come to think of it, should I want to start using “deco” in place of “decompression” in my own life, I can, which is just one example of the things I learned from divers in Depth Charge. Even more engaging, Heaton helps readers understand, firsthand, what actually happens to divers when things go wrong.
Not only does the strength of this book’s adventure build off of its authentic take on diving adventure, it also finds a great home in the historical and geographic terrain that Heaton explores. In our minds, most readers of Depth Charge will have been on some well-worn paths in places like Goldeneye and Montenegro, but a distinct minority—outside of hardcore divers and world travelers—will have been to Galle, Sri Lanka. The names, language, and scenery in the book are fresh and engaging, and pair well with an equally welcome introduction to the history of the time period when HMS Hermes went down in those waters.
When Tusker enters the book, he is immediately likable, and comes across as an intriguing archaeologist with much to teach us. His midwestern roots are charming, and over the course of the book he becomes someone who you won’t stop following. The other characters in the book are similarly unique and engaging.
I even found myself wanting more of Tusker, and wished I had met him earlier on. Could he have carried more of the load, explaining some of the diving subtleties that Heaton describes? Possibly, but these are but minor quibbles. Ultimately, Tusker and his mates are now cemented in my mind as hardened explorers, and I’m looking forward to more of their adventures.
And to fans of watches and the average thriller, you won’t be disappointed. On the wrist, the villainous Malcolm Rausing fittingly sports a Rolex, whereas Tusker wears his father’s old Aquastar Benthos. Between these two men and watches we encounter a narrative packed with plenty of explosions, danger, under-the-sea intrigue, and of course, our favorite characters always stay out of Davy Jones’s Locker.
Or do they?
The Details
Depth Charge, by Jason Heaton
Swimpruf Press 2021
$14.99
Available from:
Magers and Quinn Booksellers, Minneapolis
And additional online outlets
