Readers often ask me where Porthaven is.
The short answer is simple: it doesn't exist.
The longer answer is that Porthaven is stitched together from dozens of real Cornish places — harbours glimpsed in rain, narrow lanes wandered at dusk, cafés overheard on cold mornings, and villages that seem to exist slightly outside time.
Like many fictional settings in cosy crime, Porthaven was never intended to be a perfect map of a real town. It was created to capture a feeling.
If you know Cornwall well, you will probably recognise pieces of it. The harbour owes something to the north coast fishing villages — places where the tide disappears so dramatically that boats lean sideways on wet sand by afternoon. The steep streets and whitewashed cottages come from towns where flowers spill over stone walls and sea air creeps into every doorway. The cliffs are inspired by those long Atlantic stretches where weather changes by the hour and every path seems to lead toward an old story.
But Porthaven itself belongs nowhere except the books.
That freedom matters.
A fictional Cornish mystery setting allows me to create the atmosphere readers expect from cosy crime without being trapped by geography. I can move the bakery closer to the harbour if the story needs it. I can invent hidden lanes, forgotten coves, old pubs, and suspiciously convenient footpaths. Most importantly, I can create a town that feels emotionally true, even if it cannot be found on a map.
I think readers respond to that blend of familiarity and invention. Cosy mysteries are rarely just about crime. They are about returning to a place that feels comforting, layered, and alive. Readers want the sense that they could walk into the Anchor Inn, hear gulls outside the window, and recognise the regulars at the corner table.
Cornwall makes that easy to believe.
There is already something slightly fictional about many Cornish coastal towns — the sea mist, the old smuggling legends, the winding lanes that suddenly open onto impossible views. They feel like places where stories naturally happen.
Porthaven simply gathers those feelings together into one harbour town.
So no — you won't find it on a road sign.
But if you've ever walked along the Cornish coast in heavy salt air, heard halyards knocking against masts at night, or watched a storm roll toward the harbour from the Atlantic, you may already know exactly where Porthaven is.
