Razor Tide
Author: Adrien Leiza (author page)
A coastal audit that turns into a murder investigation.
Price: $ 5.99
Price: $ 16,99
Blurb
Ten years ago, Maël Larralde left the island of Kernanez with a shattered shoulder and the taste of failure in his mouth. A night rescue went wrong; a boat went down; a boy he promised to find never came home.
Now Maël is back with the Maritime Gendarmerie, supposed to be auditing coastal procedures and keeping his head down. Instead, a fisherman’s body is dragged out of a razor-edged inlet on a calm tide that should not have killed him. The island shrugs—the sea takes who it wants.
When a second man turns up dead on the cliffs, Maël sees a pattern no one wants him to trace: smugglers, debts, and an old tragedy everyone agreed to forget.
As storms close in, Maël must choose who to protect: his career, the woman he once loved and kissed in the dark by the slipway, or the truth he came back to drown.
Story
(Excerpt from “Razor Tide” by Adrien Leiza)
Maël turned to him. “If I write this,” he said, “and if you testify, you know it may change how people look at you. Men who came to your loft, who trusted you with their birds and their secrets…”
“Some will hate me,” Gwilherm said. “Some already do, they just wrap it in jokes. Some will say nothing and bring their birds anyway. I have no control over that. I do have control over whether I die with this staying between my ears.”
Maël nodded slowly. “I can take a formal statement,” he said. “But I’d rather the first version be for me alone. So I understand it properly. Then we can repeat it with Roche, with a recorder, with the magistrate’s rules. Are you all right with that?”
“I asked you here,” Gwilherm said. “I’m not about to get shy now.”
“All right,” Maël said.
He reached into his jacket, pulled out his notebook and a pen. The gesture was familiar; Gwilherm had seen it a dozen times on quays, in kitchens, in the clinic corridor. It meant things were about to be pinned down.
“Start with where you were and when,” Maël said. “On the Avel Mor night. Then we’ll go through the lights, the other boat, and what you’ve seen since.”
“You’ll write it in that neat little script?” Gwilherm asked.
“I will,” Maël said.
Format: Ebook / Paperback
Length: Full-length novel, approx. 137,200 words · 358 pages
Genre: Coastal crime fiction / investigative procedural
Story scope: Book one in The Lantern Coast series
Tone: Controlled, tense, unsentimental, quietly relentless
Facts
Good to know: This is not a fast-action thriller. The tension builds through evidence, interviews, and observation. The sea and tides are central to the investigation.
Explore further
More titles by Adrien Leiza are available on the
books page.
Ideal for readers who like: Procedural investigations, small-community crime, maritime settings, and stories where conclusions are earned through detail rather than revelation.
Content note: Depictions of death by drowning, discussions of violence, and systemic negligence.