No Corners for the Devil: Murder and Mystery in a Cornish Seaside Village

Sally Baxter and her family decide that owning a small round house on the peaceful Cornish coast would be a great place to open a bed and breakfast, that is until the day that their first guests are to arrive and the body of a young village girl is found washed up on their beach. Now Sally find she is in for the fight of her life to protect one son and to defect another all the while trying to find out things about her husband and the other villagers that will leave her wondering if there really is solitude to be found. Though this is a mystery, the who done it part is rather easy to figure out, but the interplay between the characters is what makes this a more interesting read. First in the DCI Shannon series.

I hope this is the start of a new series. This book definitely falls into the category of English village mystery. The descriptions of the countryside, the farming community and the local inhabitants are well-written and evocative. The story moved along at a brisk pace and the "reveal" was realistic. Worth reading.

The plot was good and there were enough suspects to keep me going, but the motive was a little weak. What I really liked about the book was the characters. There are a lot of them, but each was unique and interesting in their own right and I really liked the relationships between the characters. I can only hope this is the beginning of a series as I should really like to see how these characters develop over time.

I would have given this book 3.5 stars, but since that wasn't an option, I went ahead and bumped it up to 4. I believe I'm correct in saying that this is Olive Etchells' first mystery book (though she has written other novels), and it's not a bad effort at all. The story starts out by introducing us to the Baxters, a family consisting of Sally, Robert and their three children. They've recently moved to village in Cornwall and Ben, the youngest son, soon discovers the body of a 17-year-old girl on his favorite beach. The oldest son, Luke, immediately comes under suspicion, since he was the last one to see the girl alive, but before long the whole family becomes involved, one way or another, with the murder. DCI Channon, a quiet and kind officer, heads the case with his abrasive assistant, Sergeant Bowles, and the two soon discover that there is much more to the case than they initially expected. The writing in this novel was solid, though I found some of the dialogue, especially Sally's "internal dialogue," to be a bit awkward. One of the major problems I had with this book is that I just didn't like the characters all the much (with the exception of DCI Channon). Having said that, however, I would most likely pick up another mystery by Etchells, should she decide to write more of them.