The Cold Shore

LoveReading Says

First novel in the Detective Gavin Piper series, Rachel Amphlett’s The Cold Shore is steeped in atmosphere as a race-against-time investigation ramps up to all-but confound the nascent skills of a rookie detective. 

Gavin Piper had only travelled to Kent’s eerie Hoo Peninsula to help his DI superior with a minor task when the discovery of a brutally murdered body on a boat sees him embroiled in a complex case that would challenge even experienced detectives (Piper is still at the stage of thinking of applying to take his detective’s exam), and so a trial by fire is ignited in the wake of a murder at sea.

The challenges of the case are pithily described by one of Piper’s colleagues: “So we’ve got an abandoned boat, a victim with no ID, and no witnesses apart from the bloke who found him dead. Where the hell do we start?”. And then comes another murder, and a creeping sense that the Kentish coastal community is seething with secrets.

A spin-off from the author’s Detective Kay Hunter series, readers who are familiar with Amphlett’s work will enjoy encountering characters in a different context, while newcomers will be rewarded with discovering the kind of twisty detective fiction that keeps them guessing to the end. Setting up a twisty police procedural series in gripping style, The Cold Shore is also notable for its atmospheric evocation of place.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen’s lifelong love of reading and writing began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, and very much wished that witches (and Mrs Pepperpot) were real.
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