Authors Renee and Robert Garrison offer fans of detective thrillers a tantalizing tale of murder and mystery in The Harbormaster. This is an engrossing yarn with multiple intertwining threads that make sure the reader is hooked until the very last pages. It's very difficult to guess the culprit. I think that's a hallmark of a captivating sleuth mystery, which this book absolutely is. I loved the character interactions, especially the conversations between Baxter and Harri. Readers will love the entertaining dialogue. I felt like it enhanced the characters' personalities and made them seem all the more dynamic. I enjoyed the subtle humor and witty back-and-forths between the characters. All in all, The Harbormaster is a riveting novella for murder mystery readers.

This is not another conventional mystery set against an exotic backdrop. Baxter—who visits strip clubs, meets with forensics experts, and traces phone calls during his bouts of amateur sleuthing—is a man deeply involved in the fragile ecosystem of the marina, allowing the setting to become as important as the crime itself. The Harbormaster was inspired by real events, and the Garrisons write with obvious affection for boating communities and marina life, filling the novel with lived-in details about storms, fuel docks, maintenance work, and the unpredictability of life spent near water. At times, these descriptive passages can start to meander, but the authors quickly bring the narrative back into focus.

Despite its grisly central crime, The Harbormaster ultimately evokes a genuine sense of warmth and community. Baxter’s loving and playful relationship with his wife, Harri, gives the novel an emotional core, while the eccentric dockside characters provide humor and charm. There’s something infectious about the calm energy with which Baxter moves through the novel’s events. Even after the mystery is solved, what lingers is not the sensational details of the crime, but the desire to inhabit this unhurried world for a little while longer.