Tabitca Cope

Dark Ness Tabitca Cope

This book is the first of a trilogy, and as the title implies, it is set at Loch Ness - probably the most famous cryptozoological location in the world. However, the book is not just about monster hunting. It is what one can only call a ripping yarn, populated by likeable and intriguing characters. One suspects that the doughty heroine Laura Loomis has not a little of the author in her make-up. The author was, after all, one of the original Loch Ness chicks back in the Seventies when it was still politically allowable to refer the young ladies as 'chicks'. Laura and her motley band of academics and students find themselves immersed in an oddly satisfying adventure involving an ancient British secret, Merlin the wizard, a British secret society which one suspects - although one is never told - is a linear descendant of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, some elegantly nasty neo-Nazi villains, and a plot which would not be out of place in a novel by Jack Higgins. We cannot wait to see what happens in the next two instalments.