I’m on my way to Columbus, Ohio, today, and then New York City tomorrow. I’ve waited three years for this trip. So, Kevin Tipple, Sandie Herron, and I will share review duties this week. I have a few of my new reviews ready to go, but I’ll be including several from Kevin and Sandie as well. Thanks to both of them for helping me!

Today, Kevin reviews Beneath the Depths by Bruce Robert Coffin.

Beneath The Depths: A Detective Bryon Mystery

It is late April 2016 when Beneath The Depths: A Detective Bryon Mystery by Bruce Robert Coffin opens and attorney Paul Ramsey is soon dead. The  prominent local attorney, just hours after losing a very high profile multimillion dollar trial, has been fished out of Casco Bay after being found by a local lobsterman in the hours before dawn as he worked his traps. It is a cool morning in Portland, Maine, but the day will heat up fast in more ways than one.

Portland Police Detective Sergeant John Byron and his partner, Detective Diana Joyner, are first on the case. Sergeant Bryon has good cause not to care for the flamboyant attorney, but that no longer matters. With the man dead, he is a victim and deserves the full efforts of everyone on the case. It does not take long before it is clear that this was no accident and was, in fact, a murder. The suspect pool is massive and seems to grow larger by the hour.

Beneath The Depths: A Detective Bryon Mystery is the second book in the series that began so well in Among The Shadows. Numerous plotlines, several involving the personal lives of Bryon and members of his team, continue here and serve as background to the main plotline as noted above. This is a series that is not static. In this series, people age, situations and characters evolve, and time relentlessly moves forward. The foundation for the series was laid in the first book and here the building of what promises to be a complex and entertaining series continues.

Like Among The Shadows, this second book, Beneath The Depths: A Detective Bryon Mystery is a very good and strongly recommended. If it is not clear already, this is a series that needs to be read in order to be fully appreciated and enjoyed.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2021