'Murder at Pirate's Cove' by Josh Lanyon
- Reed
- Nov 17, 2025
- 3 min read
Author: Josh Lanyon
Rating: B
Vibe: : Bookshop inheritance fantasy meets Murder, She Wrote with a gay Scrabble champion
There's a very specific kind of reader fantasy at play in Murder at Pirate's Cove, and Josh Lanyon knows exactly what she's doing. A long-lost relative dies and leaves you a vintage mystery bookshop in a quaint New England seaside village? With a crumbling Victorian mansion thrown in for good measure? If you've ever spent hours browsing indie bookstores and daydreaming about running one yourself, this book is basically catnip. And it worked on me. I wanted to visit Pirate's Cove. I wanted to wander through the Crow's Nest and argue with the eccentric locals and maybe flirt with the stern-but-handsome police chief. Lanyon builds a setting that feels lived-in and inviting, and that's half the appeal of a cozy mystery—the world has to be somewhere you actually want to spend time.
Ellery Page is our protagonist: a gay aspiring screenwriter and Scrabble champion who's had spectacularly bad luck with dating and even worse luck with his career. When he inherits the bookshop and the house from a great-great-great aunt he never knew, he decides to make a go of it in Pirate's Cove. Of course, things get complicated when he finds Trevor Maples—a slimy property developer who'd been pressuring Ellery to sell—murdered in the bookshop during the town's annual Buccaneer Days festival. Ellery becomes the prime suspect, and with the help (and suspicion) of Police Chief Jack Carson, he sets out to clear his name.
What works here is the comfort of it all. The dialogue feels natural and easy, the pacing keeps you turning pages, and Ellery is a likable enough protagonist—charming, funny, self-deprecating without being annoying about it. Lanyon has a light touch with humor, and the small-town cast of characters is eccentric without tipping into caricature. There's a warmth to the writing that makes this the kind of book you can sink into after a long day. It's cozy in the best sense: familiar, safe, and genuinely pleasant to read.
But if I'm being honest, I wanted the mystery itself to be stronger. By around the midpoint, the twist became pretty obvious, and from there it was mostly a matter of waiting for Ellery to catch up. That's not a dealbreaker—cozy mysteries are often more about the vibe than the whodunit—but I found myself wishing Lanyon had buried the clues a little deeper or thrown in a more convincing red herring. The mystery felt competent but not particularly clever, and for a book set in a mystery bookshop, that's a bit of a missed opportunity.
The romantic tension between Ellery and Jack Carson is fine, but barely there. Jack is handsome, widowed, stern, and mostly remains a bit of a cipher in this first book. We don't really get to know what makes him tick, and the sparks between him and Ellery are more "someday, maybe" than "right now." I assume that's deliberate—this is the first in a series, after all—but it does mean the romance doesn't add much emotional weight to this particular installment.
Still, I'd give Murder at Pirate's Cove a solid B. It delivers exactly what it promises: a charming, low-stakes mystery set in a fantasy version of small-town New England, with a likable protagonist and a setting you'll want to return to. The dialogue is natural, the writing is warm, and the whole thing is just... nice. If you're looking for comfort-food reading with a gay lead and a bookshop you'll wish was real, this will hit the spot. Just don't expect the mystery to keep you up at night.
