This book starts out with a bang, pulls you in immediately with the normal Mr. Mayne style, especially with Big Bill. But unfortunately, this one didn’t keep the adrenaline flowing as the other books I’ve read by him. I had not read the 1st underwater series, maybe I’ll have to go back to see if maybe I missed something.
With that being said, I still did enjoy it, I loved the humor and banter between the main characters, it makes it fun to read. This one comes in with 4 stars since it just wasn’t quite as good as the Naturalist series. It does have a good mystery but in some places, it leaned toward a bit of coincidence and not believable. A worthwhile read though.
I was given the opportunity to read an ARC from Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley for my honest unbiased review. This one comes in with 4 stars

This was a really enjoyable detective book it had a great plot which kept me gripped. Great ending & I will definitely read others in the series by this author thank you to both net galley at the Arthur for a little bit to read this book.

If you’re looking for a fast paced, entertaining police procedural, this is it. Sloan McPherson is a detective and underwater diver for the Florida UIU. The book starts off with a bang as she attempts to retrieve a body from a submerged car while avoiding Big Bill, a 1000# alligator. While underwater, she spots a van nearby and her spidey sense is engaged. Turns out, there are four bodies in it.
This is the second in the series, but worked well as a standalone. But book one, The Girl Beneath the Sea, is equally entertaining if you haven’t read it.
Mayne does a good job of giving you those little extra details that help round out a story, like educating you on alligators.
Sloan is a well fleshed out main character and both George and Hughes are strong secondary characters.
A lot of times, the endings for these kinds of mysteries veer off into unbelievable. But this one seemed innately plausible. I look forward to book three in the series.
My thanks to netgalley and Thomas & Mercer for an advance copy of this book.

Andrew Mayne’s scuba diving police specialist, Sloan McPherson, is involved in a slow-burn murder thriller. She is one of the few employees of the Underwater Investigative Unit. Her initial dive in the story relays a really good understanding of the creepiness of what is involved in diving the alligator-infested Florida waterways. What a job. And the fact that McPherson loves it, embracing her leap-first/think-never mentality - makes her a crazy woman with something to prove.

The story was interesting with murder, cold cases, twists, and turns and no shortage of the requisite depraved, seedy predators. The focus on the politics and power plays that can go on within police investigations, especially those involving multiple agencies, was probably closer to the truth than anyone wants to believe. The flaw in the book was the protagonist’s personality. McPherson doesn’t come across as being able to command the attention and respect that gets the job done, even when she does get it done. As she is connecting the dots I had the feeling that someone was laying out the pieces for her. There was just something lacking - maybe a degree of sophistication.

Thank you NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for a copy

Sloan McPherson is a police diver in the three-person Underwater Investigation Unit. While on a dive for another case, Sloan discovers a van that turns out to have four teenagers sealed inside from a cold case from 1989. Other agencies seem quick to close the case and take the win, but Sloan finds a link between this case and a string of other unsolved disappearances and murders. Are they all connected and can Sloan crack the case?

This story takes the reader through the waterways and canals of Fort Lauderdale and deep into the Everglades. Mayne’s ability to vividly describe these settings and Sloan’s diving adventures (especially her alligator encounters!) is outstanding and makes the natural setting almost its own character.

Part police procedural, part thriller, Black Coral is a fresh and unique entry into a genre that has seen it all. While it is the second book in Andrew Mayne’s Underwater Investigation Unit, you can easily read this as a stand-alone book, but I really recommend reading the first book too. The Girl Beneath the Sea is really well done too and gives the reader a lot of background on Sloan’s character and her family. It makes it all the more satisfying to see her development in this second installment. I hope there will be a third book!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for providing me an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Another great book by Andrew Mayne. The second book in the series about Sloan McPherson and the Underwater Investigation Unit is as good as the first one. You can also read it as a stand-alone without too much trouble.

Mayne is great at building a complex and interesting storyline and combining it with lots of action. This story does not slow down for a moment, from the first scene where Sloan pulls one body out of the water, finds a suspicious van under the water, and meets a local celebrity, the alligator Big Bill, to the final scene that held me on the edge of my seat.

Sloan is still the same fascinating and complicated woman we met in the first book. This book is much less focused on her personal life than the previous one, but it worked out pretty well for me. Her commitment to solving the teen murder case absorbed me so much that I didn't really need any extra plot. Still, I appreciate the way the author weaves Sloan's personal life into her police work. This book also introduces the newest addition to the UIU, Hughes. I like how this guy completes the team and he is great at the dynamics of Sloan and George's work. It will be really nice to see him in the next book.

Florida and the Everglades are the unexpected additional characters of this book and the whole series. Not only because Sloan worked as a police diver, but also because the cases UIU is investigating are so closely tied to the place that the book couldn't be set anywhere else. The entire storyline is saturated with the atmosphere of the Everglades swamps, their unusual fauna and flora and eccentric human inhabitants. This makes this book truly unique.

I can’t wait to read the next book in this series.

Ya don't mess around with Big Bill..........

Gotta respect the girth and glamour of those 1,000 pounds and not to mention that size does matter when you're leaning close to the massive jaws of a 13-foot alligator.

Ol' Bill has set up housekeeping in Pond 65 in the Florida Everglades near Fort Lauderdale. Now Detective Sloan McPherson of the Underwater Investigation Unit (UIU) had no intention of rubbing elbows with the big guy after a car was spotted submerged near the guardrail.

As McPherson dives beneath the murky surface, the image of a white van appears. Upon closer inspection, there are four bodies inside. The team later finds out that these were the teenagers missing since they attended a rock concert in 1989. Shocking news for their parents who might have thought of them as runaways all these years.

UIU bickers with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement over just who has juridiction over this case. George Solar, Sloan's boss, fights tooth and nail to retain the case. He's allowed Sloan to be lead investigator. McPherson doesn't always play nice and follow the rules. This was a quirky talent she picked up from her father, Robert, who is a salvager and treasure hunter along the Intracoastal Waterway. And McPherson knows her stuff as she's working on a doctoral in Archaeology. Hard-nosed and determined to see things through, we'll see her stamp on quite a bit as we hit the waves.

But something doesn't sit right with McPherson. She's seeing a bigger picture here with her findings in Pond 65. There's not just old tires and crushed beer cans beneath its surface. And you can always count on Andrew Mayne to kick up his novels to a higher level of action and intellect. If you've read his previous books, then you know we're in for one pressure cooker of a ride.

This is the second book in the series with The Girl Beneath the Sea being the first. Black Coral reads beautifully as a standalone due to the backstories filled in and stabilized by Mayne. I was quite impressed with the ending as well. That's the mark of a true craftsman. It's my hope that you will check this one out and lift the hood of the first one as well. You'll do yourself quite the favor.

I received a copy of Black Coral through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to Thomas & Mercer and the talented Andrew Mayne for the opportunity.

I very much enjoyed this book! It was fun to read a detective novel from the point of view of an underwater investigator. As an oceanographer, I loved the added perspective of someone who I can relate to. Sloane is a great character and it was enjoyable to follow her thought train trying to find the Swamp Killer. The ending did feel a little rushed and like the author tried to wrap everything up very quickly but I still enjoyed the overall results. Definitely looking forward to more in this series!

*I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

I really enjoyed this book. The plot was what grabbed me in the first place. It was put together extremely well. The pacing was good . The book ended brilliantly. I havent read the first book in the series but I will definately be reading it.

My thanks to Thomas & Mercer, Andrew Mayne and Netgalley.
In my opinion, Mr. Mayne can do no wrong! It's just a truth. I've read one book that I found underwhelming. That turned out to be his first book!
I loved McPherson! Not just her, but her workmates at iui? Uiu? Crikey!
Underwater Investigative Unit!
McPherson is fearless! Just wait to see her diving skills!
Listen, I loved this book enough to buy the first book of the series! That's a rarity, lately!
Mayne is intelligent. That means his characters are too. Also, they do tend to have my messed up sense of humor! That's true love right there!

4.5 stars.

This was an amazingly good book. It is fast paced, exciting, scary, foreboding and a true page-turner. I could not stop reading! This is a police procedural suspense novel with a recurring protagonist, Sloane McPherson, a woman who is an expert diver, student of archeology and a police officer in a special underwater investigation unit which is comprised of only three people, her, her supervisor and one other guy. This is the second book in the Sloan McPherson series and I want to read the first one now too. This book had all the chills and thrills including close encounters with alligators and very descriptive scenes of the South Florida environment which is so different from anywhere else. The author has good personal experience with the area and is into science as well as magic. I read one other book by him in a different series but liked this one much better. Great plot, good character development, lots of details without getting bogged down and just a lot of fun to read! My only complaint is the finality of the ending but I’m sure another Sloane McPherson novel will be in the making.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This was a very good murder mystery, with a well crafted plot. I really liked Sloan and thought she was a strong character. The book is well paced and kept me engaged throughout.
Many thanks to Thomas & Mercer and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I don't know why I requested this from NetGalley after not liking the first book, but I'm glad I did: the second installment was a fun diversion and a marked improvement over the first.

This story is more tightly plotted, more exciting, and more focused. Several characters from the first book who are important to Sloan's life but who just dragged down the narrative too often are mostly or entirely absent here (her ex-husband, her father, and her uncle), so we can focus on the story and the mystery rather than on keeping track of a dozen people. There is a subplot about bandits that doesn't go anywhere and could have been eliminated completely, but the central plot of discovering a previously-unknown serial killer by accident was intriguing and worthwhile (much more so than the drug-smuggling in book one). This book had grit and urgency, which were missing from The Girl Beneath the Sea; it made for a more satisfying read.

There are still some truly bonkers underwater scenes, and Sloan isn't a very dynamic lead, but the final chapters, while too short, were breathtaking and tense and made me want to continue with the series.

South Florida police diver Sloan McPherson has recently been hired by nemesis turned mentor George Solar for the Underwater Investigation Unit (UIU). In the process of recovering remains from a car crash in a murky south Florida pond, Sloan finds a van which contains the remains of teenagers missing since the 1980s. Investigators think the crash is a tragic accident but Sloan thinks the crash is covering up something more sinister. As she digs into the investigation, she finds herself and her fells UIU investigators on the trail of a previously undetected serial killer.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5 stars. Andrew Mayne writes outstanding thriller/police procedural/serial killer fiction and Black Coral is no exception. The only thing that kept it from being a 5 star read for me was the ongoing discounting of Sloan's investigative results and theories - it was done repeatedly in the course of the storyline and the use of this plot device is so common it has become a bit of a cliche in the genre; it's a minor gripe, but I wish Mayne had found a different way to get where he was going. Otherwise, Black Coral is outstanding; the storyline was fast paced and the novel was hard to put down. Both books of the series have been excellent, with taut storylines and excellent characters. I highly recommend the UIU series to fans of thriller or serial killer fiction and I look forward to the next installment in the series.

i did not realize when i requested this book that it is a sequel. i need to get my hands on book one now. thank you netgalley for letting me read and review this book early. this book is a murder mystery that bodies start showing up. i love the character for sloan the main one. this was a fast paced mystery that i really enjoyed. its a read you definitely need to pay attention to details.

This was a great read. I seriously couldn’t put it down. I love reading this mystery / crime genre and this one was very well done. Sloan is a mother, a cop and a badass. When she’s hooked she just can’t let go. Her determination is refreshing and I enjoyed her character. An unsolved crime turns into something bigger that the state of Florida isn’t ready for but Sloan is up for the task.

I read The Girl Beneath the Sea as my Kindle First Read's choice back in April and I loved it. It gave me vibes from a detective TV show called The Glades that I loved but that only lasted a couple of seasons. I love the imagery and the detail in which the author was able to describe diving, boating, and underwater search and rescue. The second book in the Underwater Investigation Unit series, Black Coral was no different. I liked that we got to see more of main character, Sloan's personality in this book.and I liked the addition of new team member Hughes. I would have preferred a bit more time spent on the relationships between Sloan, Hughes, and George. I also wanted to see more of Sloan and Run's relationship as it seemed that they rekindled at the end of book one but their relationship was only vaguely mentioned a few times. As a mother of a teen, I liked the inclusion of the teenage issues that Jackie, Sloan and Run's daughter, is facing, and how Sloan in particular deals with those as not just a mother but a detective. As true crime junkie and someone who has read a great deal about serial killers and the like, I felt more interest in this particular story line than that of drug smugglers or the cartel. Black Coral's plot included alligators and the swamps of the everglades and again, the author use of the setting makes it as much of a character as anyone else in the book. There were a few times when the story slowed down in these parts but the book overall was a quick paced, action packed read. I hope there is another book in the series as I've come to feel a connection with the characters and want more from their stories.

Thanks to Thomas & Mercer and Netgalley for sharing the advanced copy of the second book in the Underwater Investigations series. I enjoyed this installment although perhaps not as much as the first one, because some of the novelty of the diving aspect has dropped off, and the underwater part of the detective story was greatly lessened. But overall, what I’m not enjoying is that I don’t think the main character is evolving at all. She talks and acts like a very young inexperienced adult vs the 30-something mom that she is. I think her naïveté is not that plausible at her age. The mystery was still interesting although perhaps too abruptly concluded. I would still continue to read more in the series.

This is the second in the series of diver/cop Sloan McPherson. She is another headstrong cop who has great instincts but sometimes bad judgement. When pulling a body out from a car accident she later discovers more bodies. I like the new diver Hughes and look forward to their relationship further developing. The story twists and turns.
A fun ride.
I was given a copy from Netgalley in exchange for an unbiased review.

Second book in the UIU series. The first book was amazing and this follow up doesn’t let down! This is definitely a favorite series.