There is also a romantic back story at the start, with Bentons's predecessor Piers Tarrant. There is Commander Dalgleish, plus his two assisting officers, Kate Miskin and newcomer Francis Benton-Smith. James carefully allows ample space in three separate chapters to detail the personal situations in the lives of each. However, because he had been born on the island, the conditions of the trust stipulated that he was allowed to visit whenever he liked.Īfter this brief introduction to the scene, we follow the three police officers who are to be involved. Nathan Oliver had been a very brusque and unpleasant man, unpopular with long-term residents and staff alike. The famous novelist Nathan Oliver was the victim, and although he had been discovered hanging from Combe island's historic lighthouse, in a position suggestive of another's involvement, it is not absolutely certain that it is not suicide. Those who visited this high-security retreat, often did so in strict secrecy.Īt the start of the book, what appeared to be a murder had taken place on the island, and Adam Dalgleish is being briefed about it. No ordinary holiday destination, "Combe Island" had at one time been a pirates' lair, then a privately owned estate, and had now been taken over and was governed by a charitable trust. Here, stressed high-level executives were sometimes admitted for recuperation and seclusion. In this case, the community is located on an island 12 miles off the north coast of Cornwall. Sometimes the settings are identifiable, although in The Lighthouse the island described is very much like Lundy Island.Īll such novels hinge on a favourite device of the author's a murder which takes place in a closed, almost inaccessible community.
Set in a nuclear power station on an isolated Norfolk headland on the East Anglian coast, this novel typically lends itself to exploring wider, perhaps darker, issues. One such location is Larksoken, the setting for her novel "Devices and Desires". James usually chooses fascinating locations for her novels. This particular novel brings to mind much earlier ones featuring Dalgleish, such as "The Black Tower" from 1975, where the action takes place on a Dorset hilltop, or the even earlier 1971 novel, "Shroud for a Nightingale", set in a student nursing school. The penultimate one in the series, it was published in 2005. James to feature her detective Adam Dalgliesh. The Lighthouse is the 13th mystery novel by P.D.
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