3 out of 4 stars
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"Back in the early 1950’s life was adventurous and uncomplicated for kids who lived a few minutes bike ride from the ocean in the coastal village of Somers Beach, Maine. In the summer we fished, swam and built huge sandcastles with our buddies. Sometimes we just watched the girls visiting 'from away.'" So begins Tidal Pools by Robert Marier, a legal thriller about a mysterious death set in a small seaside town in New England. When teenager Charles Atkins gets his foot caught between rocks walking by the ocean, the tide begins to rise. Waist-deep, he is rescued by Henry Brand, a dark-skinned man who lives with his wife Mary on Berry Island. They quickly become friends. Meanwhile, Reggie Wyman, a local fisherman and racist, makes trouble for Henry, holing his boat and puncturing the tyres on his pick-up truck. Later, when Charles is a law student at college in Boston, he sees a headline in the Boston Globe that reads "BODY OF LOBSTERMAN FOUND FLOATING NEAR BERRY ISLAND." Reggie Wyman is dead and Henry Brand is the primary suspect...
Marier's writing is simple and straightforward. His sentences are well-edited and never run too long, which makes the book easy to read. His descriptions of the natural environment such as the cove and the beach are evocative, engaging the senses: "The smell of the cove is an aroma I’ve never forgotten...First a bundle of seaweed, then a piece of grey driftwood before the tide finally stopped, satiated, as it touched the soft sand at the high tide line, a stone’s throw from the back porch." The descriptive passages are simple, never lingering too long on unnecessary detail. The book also includes black and white photographs of the ocean, people's homes, and the courthouse, adding character and realism to the story.
The overall feel of Tidal Pools is "small town cozy". It is a low-key legal thriller and murder mystery where the investigation just ticks over methodically up until the conclusion. There are no graphic depictions of violence or sex, which makes sense with Charles recounting much of the story to his grandchildren later in life. The blossoming romance between Charles and Judge Stilwell's daughter Susan is touching and old-fashioned, which is appropriate given the setting of the story in the 1950s and 1960s.
There are a few negatives about this book, but most of them are minor. Part of a descriptive sentence early on struck me as redundant: "...in a continual parade of small tiny waves..." because the adjectives "small" and "tiny" are synonyms and not both necessary. There are also some minor errors throughout the book, although definitely less than in some other books I have reviewed. Most of these are typographical errors or the incorrect use of punctuation. There are regular examples of an unnecessary comma after quotation marks: "'Can I ride my bike there?', he asked." This demonstrates how important it is to read - or at least look at - other professionally edited books to make sure your own punctuation is correct.
Due to the minor errors, I must rate Tidal Pools 3 out of 4 stars. In truth, I would probably rate it 3 stars anyway, given that it is a low-key story and never really reaches any great heights of tension. While it is interesting, I didn't find it as much of a compulsive page-turner as other legal thrillers by established authors. It is only a short novella so it might be possible to lengthen it a little to inject tension into the narrative, perhaps with another subplot or two. I would recommend it to those who enjoy relatively low-impact legal thrillers without graphic depictions of sex or violence.
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Tidal Pools
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Overall a good read.
