Book Review: Deep Tide by Laura Griffin

In the latest Texas Murder Files thriller, Laura Griffin spotlights the conflict between personal desire and professional imperatives. Barista Leyla Breda meets undercover FBI agent Sean Moran at her brother Joel’s wedding to Miranda (Midnight Dunes).

Leyla owns the popular Island Beanery, but she’s expanded her fledging empire to include catering. Siena, her catering assistant, calls in the middle of Joel’s wedding to say that two staffers are MIA, as is the wedding cake. Leyla races out of the church; she has fifteen minutes to get her cake to the reception venue, unbox it, and decorate the table with rose petals. Thankfully, her gorgeous cake is intact but it’s not easy to maneuver it out of a car while wearing a gown and heels. She hails a wedding guest, who saves the day:

She glanced up to see the man in the suit gazing down at her with the most amazing ocean green eyes she’d ever seen. 

 

He raised a brow.

 

“And kind of wobbly,” she added. “I can carry it, if you’ll just hold the doors as I go in and clear any obstacles.”

 

“You’re liable to trip in the dress.”

Stand-up, competent heroes are de riguer in Griffin’s books, but so are stand-up, competent heroines. Leyla can cope with the situation all on her own: She literally claps at Sean to get a move-on. She thanks him later when he approaches her. Is Sean there for the bride or the groom, she wonders. He dances around her inquiries into his job before asking her for dinner (no), a drink (no). Leyla finally agrees to a latte at her coffee shop the next day. It’s been forever since a woman put him in the “friend zone,” but Sean realizes Leyla is testing him. How could he know her hard-fast rule that she didn’t date tourists? Why is she still thinking about him the next morning? That is, until she goes into the alley alongside her coffee shop and smells the stench of something dead:

Not an animal but a person.

 

Leyla’s heart seized. She recognized the hair, the shirt, the chunky silver rings on the outstretched hand.

 

“No. No no no no.”

Leyla’s flashlight illuminates the grisly scene: “… the beam of light fell over the woman’s face. A line of ants marched into her lifeless mouth.” The dead woman is Amelia Albright, twenty-five years-old, one of Leyla’s baristas.

The fictional town of Lost Beach, Texas is a picturesque seaside community, but its natural attributes (deep harbor, off-the-beaten-track location) have made it a point of intersection for several crime syndicates the FBI has been investigating for years. That’s why Sean is in Lost Beach, although he tells Leyla he’s hanging around after the wedding to do some fishing. Really? She spots “the bulge above his boot where he had an ankle holster.” Sean is used to working cooperatively with local law enforcement, but the FBI outranks the locals and Sean only reports to his DC bosses:

“Agent Moran has some questions about the case. He thinks it might be linked to something he’s working on.”

 

“It’s possible,” the agent said.

 

“Right now, we’re just trying to learn more.”

 

“And what is it you’re working on?” she asked.

 

“It’s a multiagency investigation. That all I can really say at this point.”

Ah. Sean could tell Nicole more—she’s a junior detective in the Lost Beach department, who’s been assigned to lead the investigation—but that’s not in the cards. Imperceptibly, everything shifts after Amelia’s death—Leyla’s no out-of-towners mantra and Sean’s deep-seated need for secrecy shatter in the face of their intense attraction. He apologizes to Leyla for not coming clean and shows her his FBI badge. He’s still reticent on details but it’s a breakthrough.

Also, two are better than one—Leyla’s access through her catering business to the mansions of the rich and infamous meshes with Sean’s copious knowledge of a criminal conspiracy that is opaque to Lost Beach citizens. Admittedly, Leyla doesn’t want to be prevented from tracking down who murdered her employee, as well as expanding her business, so the conflict and tension is real. 

Luc Gagnon, the villain, is a coldly charming tech mogul. Think actor Edward Norton channeling Elon Musk in Glass Onion. Sean has had him in his sights for a very long time but, unlike Leyla, he hasn’t got inside Luc’s gargantuan beachfront mansion:

The reflective glass had been specially selected to block out not only heat but the prying gazes of curious beachcombers. 

 

Not to mention the telephoto lenses of an FBI surveillance crew. Luc Gagnon was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid.

Leyla’s curiosity catapults her into danger when she’s discovered snooping in Gagnon’s office during a catering engagement. A sudden veer from heightened reality to heart-stopping peril is a hallmark of Griffin’s thrillers. While watching a surveillance reel, Sean and Nicole spot Leyla stepping through a back door, closely followed by a blonde:

Sean froze the footage. “There.”

 

Nicole leaned closer. “What?”

 

“Look at her hand. She’s got a gun.”

Sean and Leyla’s believable romantic relationship matches the reality of many couples who must navigate careers and ambitions. It’s one of the reasons The Texas Murder Files series is such a satisfying read. Griffin gracefully weaves characters readers have come to know into each succeeding book. That said, bring on the next Texas Murder File—there are stories still to tell in Lost Beach.