Ten years ago, a night rescue off the Breton island of Kernaez went wrong. A boat sank. A boy never came home. Lieutenant Maël Larralde left with a shattered shoulder and a career held together by paperwork and distance. Now the Maritime Gendarmerie has sent him back — officially to audit coastal safety, unofficially because no one else wants the posting. On his first morning, a fisherman's body is pulled from a razor-edged inlet on a tide that should not have killed him. The island shrugs. The sea takes who it wants. When a second man turns up dead in the marshes, Maël traces a pattern no one is willing to see: smuggling routes through unlit channels, debts papered over by the fishing co-operative, and a web of unofficial lights that have guided boats to profit — and to grief — for years. The local gendarme wants a clean file. The co-op wants silence. The doctor who once kissed Maël in the dark by the slipway wants the truth — but not at the cost of the community she holds together. As winter storms close the crossings, Maël must decide how far to push an investigation that could break the island open — or bury itself, along with everyone who trusted him, in the next high tide. Razor Tide is an atmospheric literary thriller set on the Breton coast. First in The Lantern Coast Series.