Steve Decatur Mystery Series
On February 18, 1952, a five hundred foot oil tanker named the Pendleton snapped in half as it battled sixty foot seas in a winter storm off Cape Cod. The rescue of the Pendleton ranks as one of the most heroic events in the history of the United States Coast Guard. That much is true.
In a work of fiction, A Single Deadly Truth tells that another ship sank that same night, not far from where the Pendleton went down. The Amerigo Republic, which was headed to Guatemala as part of a covert CIA campaign, went under and the ship’s sole survivor remained commited to taking the story, and the ship’s location, to his grave. Until now.
About
Like his protagonist, John Urban worked as a college professor and sails on the waters of Southern New England on an old wooden boat.
The ocean was his desired destination from early age living a landlocked life in Western Massachusetts. Nights were dedicated to reading about boats and watching Flipper and weekends spent boating and fishing all over in Long Island. Thoughts of a career at sea ended early after a brief stint at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, but the circle of life came around some years later in the form of the fictional world of Steve Decatur.
Urban’s short stories appeared in Level Best Books mystery anthologies and the Steve Decatur mystery A Single Deadly Truth was a Kindle bestseller, rising to #48 in Kindle sales after being a Top 10 Kindle Mystery Best-seller for eight weeks. His follow-up Decatur book, Devil’s Bridge, is a due out in 2025 with a third Decatur mystery in progress and the fictional memoir, Augie, ready for publication.
Urban and his wife, Sally, live in Little Compton, Rhode Island with winters spent in Southwest Florida on Boca Grande.
