Review by Booklist Review
Evie Mead and her sister, Margot Chandler, are racing to put the finishing touches on the refurbished hotel they manage on Tregarrick Rock in the Isles of Scilly before their upcoming open house. While they aren't yet ready for guests, Margot cannot refuse her recently widowed, brokenhearted friend Louise Vanderhoven when she asks to stay. It soon becomes apparent that Louise has quickly recovered from her loss when she brings along the rich, handsome Randolph Campbell, whom the sisters don't completely trust. When the sisters' employee Ollie Martin fails to return to the island after running errands and is later found dead at low tide, and a second death occurs, there are a limited number of suspects on the isolated island. Complicating matters, valuable artifacts are found at the site of an old shipwreck. Prickly Detective Sergeant Patricia Williamson begins her investigation, but Evie also looks into the case, putting herself in grave danger. Plot twists, the beautifully described island setting, the closeness of the sisters, and the hotel frame define this cozy mystery.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Dennison's sprightly sequel to 2020's Death at High Tide finds financially struggling widow Evie Mead and her older sister, Margot Chandler, recently divorced from a Los Angeles film producer, refurbishing a crumbling 15-room hotel on the tiny island of Tregarrick off the tip of Cornwall. Into the chaos of sorting out the antiquated electrical system marches Louise Vanderhoven, a recently widowed Hollywood friend of Margot's. Louise has already decided to restyle herself as a film producer and expects Margot to be her business partner. Margot hopes Louise can help market the hotel, but the discovery of a body on the nearby shore plunges the sisters into a murder case, which involves a missing diamond-encrusted cross and a historic shipwreck, as well as a touch of bigamy, blackmail, and fraud. Dennison does a good job hiding clues in plain sight and allows readers ample opportunity to speculate on who might be the killer. A second murder raises the stakes. This lighthearted mystery is sure to please cozy fans. Agent: Dominick Abel, Dominick Abel Literary. (Aug.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
