The Cove by Alice Clark-Platts
Review by Cath Barton
Two couples – Eliza and Noah, Lou and Adam – go away together for a weekend of sea, sun and relaxation. Add the demands of their young children, copious consumption of alcohol, sexual tensions and ensuing arguments, and the scene is set for something to go badly wrong. Which it does.
The island on which Alice Clark-Platts sets The Cove is fictitious, but her knowledge of the coastal resorts of Malaysia brings verisimilitude to the setting, and enables her to ground what might otherwise be a run-of-the-mill plot in a compelling and shocking environmental drama. Clark-Platts’s description of the dive on the coral reef which is brought to an abrupt halt by a mysterious explosion is particularly vivid.
When the couples learn the probable reason for the explosion, their response to the behaviour of some of the locals destabilise an already volatile situation. Given the looming presence of a supposedly dormant volcano, and the unexpectedly early arrival of the monsoon, the story becomes a locked-room mystery, with a tightening sense of fear.
The Cove has a well-crafted and convincing plot. There is some strong and snappy characterisation: Adam – himself a thriller writer – neatly sums up Lars, the resort manager, as having ‘cheap action movie written all over him’. However, the English couples are less clearly delineated; their voices, especially those of Eliza and Lou, are insufficiently distinct. This reduces the impact of the way the story is told in alternating voices, and makes the final revelations about the characters’ relationships less powerful than they might have been. That said, The Cove succeeds as a well constructed escapist thriller and a decent holiday read.