Lead Review (The Cove)
- Book: The Cove
- Location: The Lizard Peninsula
- Author: LJ Ross
The Cove is one of three novels in The Summer Suspense Mysteries set in Cornwall (together with The Bay and The Creek).
Gabrielle Adams is an important cog in the publishing industry and as the novel opens, she is attending a party of the bookish great and good at The Natural History Museum just before Christmas. As the evening dwindles, she sets off for South Kensington tube but is pushed onto the track. Although badly injured, she survives.
Suffering PTSD, with multiple panic attacks, she decides to leave her life in London. Mardy Mark, her long-term partner, has expunged himself from her life. This leaves her fully free to depart, and bags herself the manager’s job at ‘Carnance Cove Books and Gifts’, set in an idyllic and remote location that regularly gets cut off by the tide. A timely retreat for her, away from the terrible incident for which no-one has yet been arrested. Then she is witness to a terrible crime.
The author amusingly takes aim at the publishing industry in general. She renders Gabrielle a beacon of integrity: Gabrielle chooses which titles she will feature in the bookshop, and will not succumb to paid influence from the bigger publishers, who will inevitably try to persuade her to stock certain titles of their choice. And the characters in the opening chapters are a pretty ghastly bunch of colleagues and authors.
The location was inspired by the author’s visit to Kynance Cove.
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