DANGER AT THE COVE

Adventure blooms off the Cornwall coast for a pair of middle-aged sisters.

Evie Mead and Margot Chandler have hit the daily double of cozy tropes. Evie’s longtime husband dies, leaving her nothing but debt, around the same time her sister Margot’s no-good spouse leaves her for a younger squeeze. Instead of repairing to some charming country village, however, the two make their way to Tregarrick Rock in the Isles of Scilly, a remote and thinly populated region with tenuous ties to Britain. There they take out a long-term lease on the Tregarrick estate from absentee landlord Cador Ferris, hoping to make the sprawling property into a tourist destination. The two have vastly different ideas about the clientele they might attract: Evie meticulously restores each suite in period furnishings while Margot plans to install a helipad. But the two are inching their way toward their grand opening when a combination of human weakness and nature’s wrath throws a wrench in their plans. Softhearted Margot agrees to allow a recently widowed old friend from California to stay for a few days in their not-quite-completed accommodations ahead of an epic storm that, along with the vernal equinox and historic low tides of the syzygy, will lay bare large parts of the sea bed. The hotel staff plans an expedition to explore the wreck of the Isadora, normally inaccessible. But the disappearance of handyman Oliver Martin complicates things. Soon the wild beauty of the island must be tamed to host a police investigation as murder and deceit invade Tregarrick Rock.

Its novel setting pushes this cozy to offer unexpected pleasures.