THE COVE

A London editor who was nearly killed in an Underground station flees to an idyllic spot in Cornwall only to learn what generations of earlier protagonists have known: Crime knows no geographic boundaries.

Gabrielle Adams’ life as a successful editor at Frenchman Saunders ended the night she left a party and was pushed onto the tracks by the “Tube Killer.” She was lucky enough to survive, but PTSD has battered her memory, her concentration, and her tolerance for socializing. Unable to continue in her job, she applies for a position as manager of Carnance Cove Books & Gifts, on Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula, where life is perfect. Bookstore owner Nell Trelawney is hospitable and accommodating; her son, Jackson, is flirtatious and dishy; and aspiring painter and photographer Luke Malone, widowed two years ago by a boating accident, quickly turns from a friend into something more. But there’s trouble in paradise, as Gabi realizes one night when she witnesses someone pushing a figure from a cliff. DS Jane Lander, the local police officer, finds no sign of a corpse and no reports of a missing person, and Gabi can’t help wondering if she imagined the whole thing. Attempting to identify the victim herself, she runs afoul of Lander and eventually awakens the beast within the cove, turning the whodunit into a melodramatic pursuit. The solution to the mystery arrives with so little evidence that most readers will be surprised, and more than a few of them dismissive.

An exercise in atmospheric tourism in the guise of a whodunit.