Marcus Feld writes the sea better than almost anyone working in the thriller. Salt and Ashes opens on a dying stretch of coast where a decades-old disappearance resurfaces with the tide, and for two hundred pages it is close to unputdownable.
The atmosphere is superb; the plotting, mostly. Feld’s gift is texture — the fog, the grit, the cold.
Feld’s coastline is a character, and it is the best one in the book.
The resolution ties off a beat too neatly for a story this atmospheric. Still, few thrillers are this well made.
