The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (novel)

The Reincarnation of Peter Proud was written by popular fiction author Max Ehrlich.

When they are strung together they have him swimming in a lake at night and drowning at the hands of a woman who strikes at him from the safety of a rowboat, mercilessly bludgeoning him with her paddle.

It helps being independently wealthy as he finds himself taking an extended sabbatical as he painstakingly goes through old newspaper records for cases of death by drowning.

Deciding he must get closer to the principals involved in his death he begins a romance with the daughter of the woman that may have murdered him out on the lake.

She is so certain that he is the same man as her husband that she feels she must do something about it, and possibly call him on it, if not take him out to the center of the lake and kill him all over again.