Detective Harper Lewis moved to the quiet little coastal town of Lagunes Bay to escape the stress and burnout of the city. She left behind a shootout that had resulted in two gunshot wounds to her leg. Three months after her move, a king tide eats away a sand dune revealing the body of a young female. A body with a deep cross gouged into its chest.
The body belongs to Haley Rose, a young girl who went missing three years ago. Lewis is suspicious that the search was rudimentary at best because of the girl’s tarnished ‘loose’ reputation around town. She suspects the locals were barely concerned she was gone.
Haley was close to Tate Moon, an archetypal ‘golden boy’: school captain and football star. Tate’s younger brother, Ben, also went missing a few years before Haley. Tate and his two best friends, Luthur and Brylie, were with Ben the day he disappeared.
Two years after Haley disappeared, Brylie and her father furtively left town. Now in the present they have returned just as surreptitiously as they left. Tate has never understood how Brylie just cut him out of her life, never returning emails or calls. Suspicion surrounds both exit and return. The narrative revolves around this trio. Both boys have feelings for Brylie. A triangle of love and jealousy.
The timeline repeatedly delves back into the past to the point that Ben went missing. The police are now working on not one case but two. As progress is made on Haley’s murder, the mystery of Ben’s disappearance is slowly unravelled.
King Tide is enjoyable and impressive for a debut.
Reviewed by Neale Lucas
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE AUTHORLuke Johnson is from Ocean Grove, Victoria, and is a Senior Physiotherapist. He was the physio for the Geelong Football Club while being a Western Bulldogs supporter, giving him a good understanding of a dual narrative.
Luke has always been a writer at heart and has three novels in a drawer, but when COVID-19 hit, he decided that now was the time to take his shot. Luke then won the 2021 Bellarine Writers Competition short story competition and was the Equal Second Prize Winner of the Sorrento Creative Writer Prize.
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