Forgotten Coast Books In Order

Publication Order of The Forgotten Coast Books

Forgotten Coast Series by Dawn Lee McKenna are a set of suspenseful, semi noir fiction novels by one of the best American talents in the suspense genre. Lee McKenna is known for penning the “Forgotten Coast Florida” Suspense series that went on to become a bestselling series and “See You” a Southern fiction novel. She has also co-written “The Still Waters” Suspense series alongside Axel Blackwell her friend. While she was born in Florida, she developed a love for writing Southern novels after she moved to Tennessee when she was in her thirties. Her Southern novels are set in small quirky towns with remarkable, funny and fascinating characters though the South itself is also a character in her novels. While she writes novels that are to some extent different, they have a lot in common. The most common thing about her novels is that they have damaged yet deeply funny and strong characters, who are relatable despite their flaws. From Miss Evangeline the 90 year old Creole, to Jack Canfield with his droll and honor, to Maggie Redmond who is damaged and strong and Bennett Boudreaux the dangerously charming and hilariously inappropriate criminal, they are all lovable characters.

Dawn Lee McKenna loves to describe herself as a functional but flawed Christian, coffee addict unrepentant romantic, true dork and wannabe homesteader. When she is not writing her novels, she loves playing with her kids and her cat. She currently lives in Tennessee with her three children.

The Forgotten Coast series is set in Apalachichoia, Florida and tells the stories of the women and men who love and live in the small town. Small as it is, the town has more than its fair share of criminals who manufacture and sell drugs ranging from Marijuana to Methamphetamine. Sheriff Wyatt Hamilton is charged with stopping them and to help him with the job is Lieutenant Maggie Redmond. Maggie is a thirty something year old police officer and the chief investigator of the Sheriff’s Department. She is recently divorced but is still on cordial terms with her previous husband. She has a daughter and a son and they live in what had been her grandparents’ home alongside a dog and a rooster. Besides her investigative work she loves to grow vegetables which she sometimes donates to the town’s community organization. She is on good terms with her boss, her coworkers and her parents who live in town too. Her children often visit their grandparents whenever they can find some free time. While it does seem like she has the perfect life, things are never as clear as they seem to be. Maggie is a tough woman with her ex, at work and at protecting a past shrouded in mystery.

In “Low Tide”, the first novel of the Forgotten Coast series we are introduced to Maggie, a detective investigator in a small town that just got divorced from David her husband. They had been a couple since they were in grade school but she had been forced to divorce him when he would not stop selling pot. She now lives with her son Kyle who is ten and her sixteen year old daughter Skye. She always her best to live up to high standards of integrity she has set for herself for the sake of her children. But then Gregory Boudreaux allegedly commits suicide on St. George Island. It is one of the most mysterious suicides as she cannot find any notes though his house is filed with pending bills. The man had raped her years ago and hence she finds it hard to investigate the death though she had never told anyone about it. While they are investigating Boudreaux’s death they stumble upon another conspiracy to peddle meth. To get to the ringleader they have to promise to take care of his children and his girlfriend. Unpalatable as it seems, Maggie has to keep her word to the man’s girlfriend. Things get more complicated when Bennett Boudreaux the scariest and richest man in the small town develops an interest in Maggie. Everyone wonders why he would suddenly be interested in the investigator but Maggie is slowly drawn to Bennett. Still Maggie thinks he may suspect that she had a hand in the murder of his nephew. She now needs to help a young girl from a volatile drug dealer, hide her links to the dead Boudreaux and develop her fledgling relationship with Wyatt Hamilton her boss.

“Riptide”, the second novel of the Forgotten Coast series continues the story of Lt. Maggie Redmond. Just as things were seemingly going right for Maggie something happens to mess it all up. She has just been called in to investigate a gruesome crime where some fisherman had caught a severed foot in his nets rather than fish. It is not long before investigations reveal that the foot belongs to an old college mate of Gregory Boudreaux, a certain Brandon Wilmette. The man had allegedly committed suicide in the first novel of the series but Maggie still has to investigate and bring the case to a conclusion. Her investigation of Wilmette’s death brings to light some damning evidence against Bennett Boudreaux, the master criminal and richest man in town. Apparently, Wilmette had tried to shake down the man and had disappeared soon after. And then things start getting weird when she develops a liking to Bennett though she likes Sheriff Wyatt Hamilton more. But she knows that her secret connection to the deceased men and her developing relationship with Bennett may just spell the end of her relationship with Wyatt.

“What Washes Up”, the third novel of the Forgotten Coast series sees Sheriff Wyatt and Lt. Maggie having to investigate why their beaches are filling up with dead bodies of women, men and children. She had been injured in the action of the previous novel, but Maggie is not one to stay away from some action. Wyatt is having none of it, though he has allowed her to work on the severed foot case from before she was shot. Things really heat up when Maggie tells Wyatt the truth of her rape at the hands of Chris Deveroux when she was fifteen. This is a secret she has always kept to herself but she knows she has to tell someone given that the victim of the severed foot case was a witness to that rape years ago. Wyatt thinks there may be something linking Christopher’s father to the cases. The dead that they had discovered had obtained help from Christopher’s father to get to Florida, only for their boats and rubber dinghies to get destroyed. Only one survivor a child had lived to tell the tale though he is sent back to his native Guatemala. While her arm is healing fine, the recent revelations and the stress of the investigation have so fractured her relationship with Wyatt, which is now hanging by a thread.