Sherry Thomas' Favorite Mysteries Set on the South West England Coast

I first came across the South West Coast of England on Google Earth. At the time, having young children prevented me from traveling to the places I wrote about and I turned to Google Earth, especially its Panoramio geotagged photo layer, to give me an initial idea of what a particular location looked like.

I no longer recall what I was searching for exactly, but I still remember the feeling of beauty-drunk wonder when I first saw pictures of those rugged headlands, green moors, sometimes purple with heather, and giant bluffs plunging perilously into the waves below. What is this place?

What I’d accidentally found was images of the Hangman Cliffs in North Devon: Greater Hangman, 1,043 feet in height at the summit, ranked as the highest sea cliff in England. When I dug a little further, I learned that the entire coastline from Minehead in Somerset to Poole Harbour in Dorset—wrapping around most of the West Country—was walkable thanks to the 630-mile-long South West Coast Path.

It immediately became a bucket list item—I wanted to set foot on the coast and feel the wind coming off the sea. When I finally visited the U.K. in 2014, I made sure to schedule an excursion to the Hangman Cliffs. My second trip in 2018 revolved entirely around the South West Coast Path: My family and I spent a week on the path, hiking from Minehead to Woolacombe.

It’s one of my ultimate life goals to hike the rest of the path. If you know me in real life, I’ve probably asked you about your knees and your endurance level, with the goal of luring you to perhaps join me someday for a few segments of the great undertaking.

I don’t think I’d ever set a goal to write books that take place along the South West Coast of England. But the thing about writers who fall in love with specific places? They return to it again and again in their stories.

My affection for the South West Coast Path—the parts I’ve walked, at least—led me to give Lord Ingram, the love interest in my Lady Sherlock historical mystery series, a cottage on the North Devon coast, looking straight across the tiny harbor of Combe Martin to the Hangman Cliffs.

And then, in The Vanished Sister, book nine of the series, the cottage, which hadn’t been seen since book two, became a major setting, alongside the dramatic scenery of the coast itself. Which led to a very interesting one-day, seventeen-mile walk in 2025, between Lynton/Lynmouth and Combe Martin, two important locations in the book, so I could investigate, on the ground, the terrain that would matter tremendously to the story.

Alas, as much as the 2025 walk helped me figure out how the body did and didn’t fall into the sea, it did not advance my other goal of covering more of the South West Coast Path on foot, as I’d already hiked the same stretch before. But no problem. While I dream of future hiking trips, I can always read about my beloved South West Coast in a variety of mysteries.

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Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca

A bestseller that has never gone out of print since its publication almost ninety years ago, Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier is the classic Gothic tale, made all the more atmospheric by the estate of Manderley being within walking distance of the Cornish cliffs.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase

Dorothy L. Sayers wrote many novels featuring her enduringly popular detective Lord Peter Wimsey. But perhaps the most popular of those have been the quartet that chronicled Wimsey’s courtship of and eventual marriage to mystery writer Harriet Vane, a woman who, much like Sayers, broke with many of the conventions of her day.

The second of the Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane books, Have His Carcase, is set on the South West Coast, as Harriet had to travel through the West Country to get to her holiday by the sea, where she did a good bit of trampling. The exact spot is never specified and Sayers herself admitted to building the locale to suit her story, but a movie was made of the book in the 1980s and fans of the movie have determined that Lulworth Cove in Dorset served as a primary location, with some other specific exteriors shot in Cornwall.

Agatha Christie, Multiple Novels

Agatha Christie, the Grande Dame herself, was born in Torquay, in a stretch of South Devon coast known as the English Riviera for its mild climate and picturesque seaside towns. She enjoyed a happy childhood there and would go on to set a number of her books in the area. Burgh Island, a tidal island off the South Devon coast, is said to be the setting of And Then There Were None and Evil Under the Sun.

Miss Marple stayed at the Imperial Hotel in Torquay, and two fictional Majestic Hotels in two different books—The Body in the Library and Peril at End House—are both considered to be but the Imperial Hotel plonked down in made-up locations.

P.D. James, The Lighthouse

The Lighthouse by P.D. James, the thirteen book in the Adam Dalgliesh mystery series, takes place on a remote and windswept island off the Cornish coast. I am very curious for the Cornish portion of the South West Coast Path, as so many books, mysteries and otherwise, have been set there.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles

But I would really argue Devon is not less atmospheric, holding up Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles as my exhibit number 1.

Jane Austen, Persuasion

And if you, dear reader, wishes to branch out a bit from mysteries, Persuasion, by Jane Austen, is set in the town of Lyme Regis in Dorset, where the coast is slightly gentler and not so rocky and daunting. As a side note, Lyme Regis is also one of the most famous spots on the Jurassic Coast, where the fossil collector Mary Anning made major paleontological discoveries in the first half of the nineteenth century.

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