Red Tide: A Suncoast Noir Mystery Thriller (Circle of Tides Book 3)
An engineered biological catastrophe. A $254 million barrier-island land grab. And undeniable metallurgical proof that Ray Spooner's dead mentor is alive.
August 1995. A suffocating bloom of Karenia brevis red tide chokes thirty miles of the Florida Suncoast, filling the air with neurotoxic aerosol and driving Mom-and-Pop beachfront motels into sudden insolvency. When Frank and Maria Rossi of the historic Lido Sands Motel are hit with an accelerated disaster-default foreclosure by developer Donald Palmer's banking syndicate, marine forensic auditor Ray Spooner samples the dead water.
The bloom isn't natural. Working with coerced marine biochemist Dr. Elena Whitaker, Cortez waterman Artie Whittaker, and Lloyd's adjuster Beverly Burns, Ray traces a plume of synthetic orthophosphate and barium catalysts to a covert subsea pipeline running out of Port Manatee and an offshore command barge, the Apex Venture-all timed to trigger $254 million in catastrophe swaps and seize thirty-two barrier-island parcels by Friday's court deadline.
Then Ray inspects a seized chemical transport rig at the county impound yard and finds a custom 4140 chromoly tension-hitch machined with a spiral shell-mill signature and a three-percent shear-pin tolerance that only one man on earth could cut: Leo McAniff.
To save the coast and clear the water before the foreclosure gavel falls, Ray must board the heavily armed Apex Venture in a midnight Gulf squall, reverse its industrial slurry manifolds, and descend into a flooding double-bottom hull void to disarm eighty pounds of military C-4.
RED TIDE is the explosive third volume in the Circle of Tides series-combining environmental forensics, financial warfare, and relentless underwater suspense.
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