The Forgotten Coast Series in Order: How to read Dawn Lee McKenna’s books?

Murder under the Floridian sun.

What is The Forgotten Coast series about?

Written by American author Dawn Lee McKenna, The Forgotten Coast is a mystery/thriller series taking place in the Sunshine State, as the title suggests it.

More precisely, the series is set in Apalachicola, Florida, where we follow the investigations of Lt. Maggie Redmond of the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department. In that position, she works with Sheriff Wyatt Hamilton to solve crimes, mostly murder mysteries.

The Forgotten Coast Books in Order:

Every book in the Forgotten Coast series works as a standalone story, but the lives of the different characters evolve from one novel to the other.

1. Low Tide – In Apalachicola, Florida, sinister things are afoot, as sinister things tend to be. Lt. Maggie Redmond is called to a crime scene on St. George Island, where she is met with the body of Gregory Boudreaux. The medical examiner calls it a suicide, but no one knows that Maggie has a horrible connection to the dead man.
2. Riptide – When a local fisherman finds a severed limb in his net, it sets off a chain of events that no one can anticipate. Lt. Maggie Redmond soon discovers that the foot belongs to the friend of another recently dead guy, Gregory Boudreaux, the man she never told anyone about. Gregory’s death was thought to be a suicide. That seems less likely, now that his best friend Sport’s foot has shown up out of the blue, as it were.
3. What Washes Up – When more than a dozen bodies wash up on the beach on St. George Island, the residents of Apalach are outraged, and none more so than investigator Maggie Redmond and Sheriff Wyatt Hamilton. It’s time for the greedy to answer for the lives of innocents.
4. Landfall – As a hurricane gathers its power just off Apalachicola’s shore, another storm comes to a head in Lt. Maggie Redmond’s home. Held prisoner by a man bent on avenging the death of a son, Maggie must find a way to save herself and her two children.

5. Dead Wake – Maggie and Sheriff Wyatt Hamilton learn that local kingpin Bennett Boudreaux was the primary suspect in the disappearance of Holden Crawford almost forty years ago, but he had an alibi. The problem is, no one knows what that alibi was. The former sheriff won’t tell, and even Boudreaux himself refuses to say.
6. Awash – When a young girl is attacked, Lt. Maggie Redmond draws on her own experience as a rape survivor to give the girl the help that she herself never got, but in the process finds herself doubting her judgement, her commitment to the law, and who she believes herself to be.
7. Apparent Wind – When some locals find a dead woman in the jaws of a gator, it’s fairly upsetting. When Lt. Maggie Redmond finds lifelong friend Axel Blackwell in the dead woman’s hotel room, it’s a little more upsetting than that. Axel becomes the chief suspect in his ex-wife’s murder, but Maggie is convinced that he would never harm the beautiful but tragic Marisol Corzo.
8. Lake Morality – When Kristen Morgan abandoned her baby girl in a locked car, Lt. Maggie Redmond was angry. Though the baby was uninjured, things could have been much worse. When the mother’s body is found two days later, in a lake far outside town on the road to the county prison, Maggie suddenly has more than child endangerment or a missing person on her hands.

9. Squall Line – But what happens when a beloved law enforcement officer is shot down, and the shooter is a terrified young man, barely more than a child? Lt. Maggie Hamilton is devastated when a good friend and fellow officer is shot while trying to keep a bullied high-schooler from making a terrible mistake. Soon after, videos of the event become viral, fanning the flames.
10. Overboard – When a group of drug dealers dumps the Sheriff’s Office investigator overboard one night, leaving her to her fate, Maggie finds herself in the middle of her most terrifying nightmare, with no hope of waking up safe in her own bed.

Prequels

These novellas are taking place before Low Tide, but it’s better to know the characters before reading them.

1. Ebb Tide – Maggie Seward’s first case as a criminal investigator with the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office involves the shooting death of an elderly man during what appears to be a home robbery. Who broke into the French’s home? Was Robert French’s murder the reason for the break-in, or a terrible, unexpected result?
2. Back of the Bayou – Miss Evangeline, a middle-aged Creole woman, takes it upon herself to care for a little Cajun boy when his beautiful mother is killed. The first time she walked down the dirt road to the boy’s remote and ramshackle home, she had no idea she would walk that road for decades. She also had no idea how important that boy would become to her, or how their lives were about to be permanently interwoven.

If you want more Florida-set series, take a look at our Carl Hiaasen guide. Don’t hesitate to follow us on Twitter or Facebook to discover more book series.