Cal McGill is a unique investigator and oceanographer who uses his expertise to locate things - and sometimes people - lost or missing at sea. His expertise could unravel the haunting mystery of why, twenty-six years ago on a remote Scottish beach, Megan Bates strode out into the cold ocean and let the waves wash her away.

Mark Douglas-Home is a journalist turned author, who was editor of the Herald and the Sunday Times Scotland. His career in journalism began as a student in South Africa where he edited the newspaper at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. After the apartheid government banned a number of editions of the paper, he was deported from the country. He is married with two children and lives in Edinburgh.