Salt On Her Tongue: A Kes Morris File by C.S. Porter
Reviewed by Heather McBriarty
Detective Kes Morris is back, but after finishing a mandatory leave, she’s seemingly thrown into a fluff case: a missing girl, a distraught boyfriend and a high-powered father who wants things wrapped up quickly and quietly. Arriving in a sleepy fishing village, Kes finds that neither the locals nor the powerful Bay of Fundy, are willing to give up their secrets. But when a dead man is found floating in its treacherous waters, with the girl last seen in his company the night before, Morris finds herself at odds with the local law enforcement and her own chief. As a cop and a mother, she is irresistibly drawn to identifying the dead man and finding his link to the missing girl.
“Salt On Her Tongue is award-winning author C.S. Porter’s second offering in their Kes Morris series, and it is as fast-paced and brilliantly written as the first.”
Salt On Her Tongue is award-winning author C.S. Porter’s second offering in their Kes Morris series, and it is as fast-paced and brilliantly written as the first. No small feat there! Morris is a deeply flawed yet relatable protagonist - a hardened police officer, a career woman and a mother who is desperate to shed the addictions that imperil her relationship with her daughter. She is also brilliant at her job and relentless, as those around her soon discover. As a big city cop, she again runs up against small town culture and brings in help from comrade-in-arms and IT specialist Chester. Together, blending basic investigation techniques and high-tech, they chase down an elusive, shadowy figure who seems to be taunting them from ten steps ahead. The questions, like the bodies, keep piling up.
Porter manages to blend gritty police procedural fiction — a fast-moving and thrilling chase - with deeper themes of family and what people are willing to sacrifice to protect their own, Morris, Chester, and their prey included. Porter does all this while balancing evocative writing with clean, spare prose. Each word is chosen with masterful control. Each thread of the plot is teased out with superb pacing. Each character is infused with real life, not least the Bay of Fundy. Not merely a backdrop to the action, the Bay flows through the story, moulding both characters and settings to its powerful tidal rhythms. Porter, in their first book and in this, have kept their settings generically Maritime. While the towns and cities are still disguised, Porter has rooted this story firmly in, on and beside this iconic body of water, a powerful backbone. Filled with twists and turns, Salt On Her Tongue is a book that will hook you and keep you on the edge of your seat, guessing to the very last page. My plea to C.S. Porter: more Kes Morris, please!
About the Author:
C.S. Porter is a writer, photographer, and filmmaker who lives near the sea and has passed on that love, fear, and awe to Kes.
About the Reviewer:
Heather McBriarty is the author of the non-fiction account of the First World War, Somewhere in Flanders: Letters from the Front and a novel of the “Great War” Amid the Splintered Trees. She is a blogger, reviewer and served as a juror for the 2023 Atlantic Book Awards. She is a retired Medical Radiation Technologist, doting grandmother, and avid sailor. She lives by the sea in historic Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada.
Book Details:
Publisher : Vagrant Press
Publication date : June 10 2025
Language : English
Print length : 256 pages
ISBN-10 : 1774713624
ISBN-13 : 978-1774713624