Title: Murder at Pirate’s Cove
Series: Secrets and Scrabble: Book One
Author: Josh Lanyon
Publisher: Amazon/Kindle Unlimited
Length: 206 Pages
Category: Cozy Mystery
At a Glance: I can’t wait to visit Pirate’s Cove again and get to know the characters better—especially Jack, and Ellery’s employee Nora, who is completely fabulous—and, of course, see what other messes Ellery gets himself into. So, Much. Fun. Go check it out!
Reviewed By: Jules
Blurb: Ellery Page, aspiring screenwriter, Scrabble champion and guy-with-worst-luck-in-the-world-when-it-comes-to-dating, is ready to make a change. So when he learns he’s inherited both a failing bookstore and a falling-down mansion in the quaint seaside village of Pirate’s Cove on Buck Island, Rhode Island, it’s full steam ahead!
Sure enough, the village is charming, its residents amusingly eccentric, and widowed police chief Jack Carson is decidedly yummy (though probably as straight as he is stern). However, the bookstore is failing, the mansion is falling down, and there’s that little drawback of finding rival bookseller–and head of the unwelcoming-committee–Trevor Maples dead during the annual Buccaneer Days celebration.
Still, it could be worse. And once Police Chief Carson learns Trevor was killed with the cutlass hanging over the door of Ellery’s bookstore, it is.
Review: When I saw that Josh Lanyon had started a cozy mystery series, I was both intrigued and excited. Having enjoyed everything I’ve read of hers, I felt confident she was going to knock it out of the park, but my experience with the genre is admittedly limited. In fact, before reading this one, I had only read one other cozy—Cat Sebastian’s Hither, Page (which was delightful). In other words, enough to know I wanted to read more, but not enough to have a true framework for critique or comparison. However, I do know a good story, and I know what I like, and Lanyon’s Murder at Pirate’s Cove was an absolute treat. I mean, what’s not to love about a Scrabble-loving bookstore owner, a grumpy cop, and a quirky small town with secrets, right? It was engrossing and tons of fun from start to finish.
Ellery Page didn’t know his Great-great-great Aunt Eudora at all, which made it all the more inexplicable when she left him her house and her bookshop. But, inexplicable or not, Ellery needs a reason to get out of New York, and accepting his new home and business and moving to the small town of Pirate’s Cove seems like the perfect move. What he didn’t know was that the house had been neglected so badly it should quite possibly be condemned, and the bookstore, which wasn’t exactly a moneymaker, was badly in need of some repairs itself. And, if the fact that he’s gone deep into his savings trying to renovate the house and the shop isn’t bad enough—not to mention he knows nothing about selling mystery books—now there’s a dead body in the store, and he is his only alibi. This passage was the perfect summary of poor Ellery’s situation.
This was unbelievable. All of it. The fact that Trevor would be murdered. The fact that Ellery would be suspected of that murder. It was like a book. Like a book he sold in a shop he had inherited from an eccentric aunt he’d never even known existed until she died and left him this crazy house in a crazy town where people dressed up like pirates and got themselves murdered in other people’s bookshops.
Was he dreaming?
There was so much to enjoy in this book. You get all the great elements of a cozy, expertly woven together by Lanyon. Small town; good, twisty mystery; great characters, many of whom are just that…characters; and an endearing, amateur sleuth in Ellery. I loved the names of all the places and shops in the town. I adored Ellery, and, though we haven’t gotten to know Jack as well yet, I quite liked him too. The few descriptions of him in the book were epic. I loved this:
He wore a wedding ring—he might even be married—but from the moment Ellery’s gaze had first tangled with the police chief’s piercing green-blue one, he had been pretty sure Carson had a secret that would deeply disappoint the ladies of Pirate’s Cove.
Ellery spends the entire book desperately trying to prove his own innocence as the evidence and bodies pile up, and his aforementioned sleuthing aggravates Jack to no end. To Jack’s credit though, he believes in Ellery’s innocence, and always comes through in the clutch. In his own grumpy way. 😉
I absolutely recommend this one, guys! I can’t wait to visit Pirate’s Cove again and get to know the characters better—especially Jack, and Ellery’s employee Nora, who is completely fabulous—and, of course, see what other messes Ellery gets himself into. So, Much. Fun. Go check it out!
You can buy Murder at Pirate’s Cove here:
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