The 3% Rule (Circle of Tides — Book 1)

In the neon-soaked shadows of 1995 Sarasota, the truth is never in the story people tell you. It is buried in the three percent they try to hide.

Former U.S. Navy salvage diver and forensic marine surveyor Ray Spooner lives by the 3% Rule: insurers happily pay out when ninety-seven percent of a casualty report adds up, which means the final three percent of physical residue is where professionals hide their crimes. Operating off his converted forty-six-foot salvage vessel, The Residue, Ray wants nothing more than to work quiet hull surveys and fund his daughter Maya's university trust.

Then the custom forty-six-foot Hatteras sportfisher Sarasota Star vanishes into a hundred-and-thirty-foot offshore karst cavern during a summer squall. Prominent developer Julian Higel III files an immediate forty-million-dollar Total Loss claim, backed by Coast Guard distress logs and a textbook seacock failure narrative. When Lloyd's of London adjuster Beverly Burns hires Ray for a verification dive, Ray's analog instruments expose a lethal contradiction.

Beneath a suffocating red tide bloom off Lido Key, the sunken yacht's Corten steel vault has been breached from the inside with military-grade thermite before the hull ever touched bottom—and the hydrodynamic sinkage trajectory carries the unmistakable mathematical signature of Ray's late mentor, Leo McAniff.

From the aristocratic estates of Harbor Acres to a zero-visibility sinkhole deep in the Myakka River wilderness, Ray and retired Cortez waterman Artie Whittaker must outmaneuver corporate mercenary Marcus Keller and uncover the forty-carat Venezuelan blue diamond at the heart of the scuttle—before the syndicate writes Ray off as collateral loss.

*Rich with authentic 1990s diving physics, analog forensic tradecraft, and relentless Gulf Coast atmosphere, THE 3% RULE launches the six-book Circle of Tides techno-noir mystery series.*

Instant Digital Delivery Package - **DRM-Free EPUB Edition (`AHS-BOOK-COT-01.epub`)**: Compatible with Apple Books, Kindle, Kobo, and all standard e-readers. - **Typeset 6×9 Print-Edition PDF (`AHS-BOOK-COT-01-print.pdf`)**: Full 429-page collector's interior layout (162,825 words, 26 chapters). - **Forensic Case File & Reader Dossier (`AHS-BOOK-COT-01-dossier.md`)**: Series chronology, 1995 Suncoast setting coordinates, and technical forensic notes.