Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
Blood in Blue Water is Margaret Allan's Bronze Age coastal-Mediterranean novel, set among a small fishing community that has been quietly trading with the wider Phoenician network and is starting to notice that the wider network has not been bringing peaceful visitors. The protagonist is a young free-diver whose family's livelihood depends on the trade routes.
Allan writes the prehistoric Mediterranean with the kind of detail Jean Auel readers will recognize: the boat construction, the diving practices, the religious life of the family, all carefully researched. The romance plot follows the genre rules. The political plot is more interesting than the cover suggests.
Three stars. Recommended to readers who like serious prehistoric romance. Not a series-launcher in the Auel sense; the book stands on its own.
Related reads
If you liked Blood in Blue Water
By Faith Divided
by Margaret Allan
Margaret Allan writing a 17th century Scottish historical. Religious conflict, a young Catholic woman in a Covenanter region, and steady period research.
The Lincoln Lawyer
by Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly 2005 review. Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, takes a case that pulls him into something larger. The novel that launched a series and a film franchise.
Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 2014 review. Three mothers at an Australian elementary school converge on a kindergarten Trivia Night where someone will die. The contemporary domestic-suspense novel that defined the late-2010s book-club shelf.
In the Woods
by Tana French
In the Woods by Tana French 2007 review. Dublin Murder Squad detective Rob Ryan is assigned to a child murder in the same woods where his two best friends disappeared twenty years earlier. The Edgar winner that launched the strongest contemporary literary-crime series.
Tell No One
by Harlan Coben
Tell No One by Harlan Coben 2001 review. A pediatrician receives an email containing a video clip of his murdered wife, eight years after her death. The single best Coben standalone and the one that defined the contemporary domestic-thriller register.
Cold Steel Rain
by Kenneth Abel
The first Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel writing New Orleans politics and corruption with a New Orleans-specific moral exhaustion you cannot fake.
More by this author