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I read P.D. James's The Lighthouse over the weekend. Overall, it was an enjoyable page-turner in the style of James's other Adam Dalgliesh mysteries, but I feel the James may be past her prime at this point. Perhaps not coincidentally, one of the main characters in the book is a novelist who is reported to also be on the downward slope of his career. Another character is an independent octogenarian, much like James herself. She seems to have taken the mantra "write what you know" to heart with this book.

The book stumbles a bit out of the gate with a rather plodding beginning in which the reader is given some background on the murder at the heart of the story and some of the characters that we'll meet later. The three person investigative team is also given some back story at this point, but to no real purpose. If you make it through all of this, congratulations. The book gets considerably better after this point.

We are next transported to Combe island, a fictional island off the coast of Cornwall. Combe is a private retreat for powerful people to visit and recharge their batteries. A lot is made of the fact that the isolation and solitude of the island will help prepare these powerful figures (PMs, captains of industry, etc.) to be more productive when they return "to the real world." Combe proves to be an inter sting if not entirely believable invention and the island's isolation sets up a mystery in the style of Agatha Christie. The limited number of suspects and the all-knowing detective fit perfectly in her style, and the choice of an isolated island as the scene of the crime hearkens back to Christie's And Then There Were None.

In a slight breaking with traditional fiction, our transportation to Combe also takes us back in time a few days. So we first will read about the events that lead up to a murder, then read all the characters' interpretation of these events when interviewed by Commander Dalgliesh and his team. I wasn't entirely happy with the time shift, mostly because I thought we needed to be a bit more explicit about things like that. I was expecting the location change, and found myself reading for a number of pages before it became clear that we were also going back to a few days prior to the previous section of the novel. However, this is a minor quibble as the characters introduced in this section are extremely engaging and I found myself eager to read more about them. Finally, the murder occurs and we switch back to Dalgliesh.

From this point forward, the novel proceeds in a regular fashion. Dalgliesh interviews the suspects and in the process collects all the clues needed to solve the crime. Some other things occur and then Dalgliesh has a revelation and figures everything out. The murderer is apprehended and we have some falling action involving more back story on the investigative team. All things considered, perhaps not the best mystery out there, but definitely worth a read.

Posted by on 3 January 2006 at 10:48 AM