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  • Location: Mullion, Helston, Cornwall

Panic Room

Panic Room

Why a Booktrail?

2000s: High on a Cornish cliff sits a vast uninhabited mansion…

  • ISBN: 978-0593076361
  • Genre: Thriller

What you need to know before your trail

The house has a panic room. Cunningly concealed, steel lined, impregnable – and apparently closed from within. Blake is housesitting and even she doesn’t know it’s there. She’s too busy hiding out herself and thinks that by being here, she can somehow hide herself.

But her remote existence is going to be invaded when people come looking for the house’s owner, missing rogue pharma entrepreneur, Jack Harkness. Suddenly the whole world wants to know where his money has gone. Soon people are going to come knocking on the door, people with motives and secrets of their own, who will be asking Blake questions they need answers to…now.

Travel Guide

Mullion

The house is fictional….or is it? It’s in Poldu Cove a north of Mullion. It’s name? Worthaleth West.

It sounds idyllic:

“I feel safe here. that’s really what it comes down to. Oh there, the sea as well. I like the ocean in all its moods, from stormy to still: white, grey, turquoise, blue. I can watch the surf crashing on the rocks for hours. On windless days, I can hear the skylarks circling above me as I head down to the beach, my legs brushing through the drifts of wild mustard and cow parsley on the narrow path. And then there are the sunsets, pink and scarlet and gold, out beyond Wold Rock, over the tilt of the world.

And then:

The house is remote, on a cliff, surrounded by silence. Inside there is a panic room, a steel room of some kind, locked from the inside. There’s short country paths leading to the house, seemingly shrouded in secrecy. Non one knows who is supposed to own it…Is it  a stylist bolt hole or a prison? A gilded one if that.

And what is this room hidden deep within?

“The steel barrier could be a sliding door, closed and locked rom the inside. Then there’d be a two floor chamber inside….”

The other properties in the novel are also rather nice – the Glasson house for example is an ‘Sizeable art deco villa”

 

Streetview Maps

A) Cornwall - Mullion - Poldhu Cove
B) Cornwall - Mullion - Mullion harbour

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

Just got this but I again had one of those mornings where I was up dead early to phone abroad and so I read this whilst waiting. It woke me up for sure! A house on a cliff in Cornwall with something akin to a panic room inside, maybe something in it, the owner unknown, the housesitter a bit of a character and a dubious estate agent…..

I normally read novels set in Cornwall that involve men on horses, romantic tales or historical reads so this was as refreshing as those waters crashing off the Cornish rocks. I confess to having a good old look on Google maps to see if I could see this house …it felt so real and menacing! Brrrr Robert Goddard you write a mean thriller. There is a certain degree of suspending your disbelief but if you realise that then it’s a unique premise although the witchy character I found strange…

There’s a lot to enjoy here, shades of that Jodie foster movie of the same name but when it’s in Cornwall, normally somewhere known for sandy beaches and ice creams, then it’s even more panic enducing…

And I’ve never read a novel for a long time where the main character is so elusive but the one with the biggest presence…

Panic over Mr Goddard. But I’m still having palpitations of ever visiting your part of Cornwall!

Booktrail Boarding Pass:  Panic Room

Destination :   Mullion, Helston, Cornwall  Author/Guide: Robert Goddard  Departure Time: 2000s

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