Tide Water Talisman is the eighth in the Luanne Fogarty series of spine-tingling swamp noir mysteries set in the springs and underwater caves of northern Florida where Luanne, a linguistics professor, serves as adjunct scuba diver for the sheriff’s department.
A rag tag group of Gulf coast hurricane refugees have managed to find a new home along the coast of North Florida, where the St. Margaret and Palmetto Rivers run into the Gulf. Some fish for a living. Others run tiny shops. Still others hire out on boats and in cafes, wherever they can find work, banded together by their common misfortune. When bodies begin to turn up in water and on land, their fragile hold on community unravels, adjunct diver, Luanne Fogarty, finds herself trying to solve the mystery among a menagerie of people from the Gulf coast, tourists from northern states, and roving souls who seem to come from nowhere specific.