Prompt – A book set somewhere you would like to go in 2021

Having read a couple of books featuring Princess Margaret, both fiction and non-fiction, I have added Mustique on to my travelling bucket list. To be honest, it’s probably a bit unrealistic, and not just for 2021! This year we are heading to Skegness – not quite the Caribbean. Murder on Mustique by Anne Glenconner has been on my wishlist since it was published and I picked it up last week for some holiday reading.

What it’s about?

A storm. A disappearance. A race against time . . .

Mustique is in a state of breathless calm as tropical storm Cristobal edges towards it across the Atlantic. Most villa owners have escaped the island but a few young socialites remain, unwilling to let summer’s partying end. American heiress Amanda Fortini is one such thrill-seeker – until she heads out for a morning swim and doesn’t return.

Detective Sergeant Solomon Nile is just 28 years old and the island’s only fully trained police officer. He quickly realises he needs to contact Lord and Lady Blake, who bought the island decades ago and have invested time, money and love creating a paradise. Jasper is in St Lucia designing a new village of luxury villas but Lady Veronica (Vee to her friends) catches a plane immediately. Her beloved god-daughter, Lily, is on the island and this disappearance has alarming echoes of what happened to Lily’s mother many years ago. Lady Vee would never desert a friend in need, and she can keep a cool head in a crisis.

When Amanda’s body is found, a murder investigation begins. Nile knows the killer must be an islander because flights and ferry crossings have stopped due to the storm warning, but the local community isn’t co-operating. And then the storm hits, and someone else disappears . . .

What I think:

This was an intriguing mystery with a fabulous location.

The main chatacter, Lady Veronica Blake, is a thinly disguised version of the writer – Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Margaret with a husband who owned the island of Mustique. Lady Vee is loved and respected by the community she has supported for so long and in a great position to help a police investigation on the normally safe luxury island.

Billionaire’s daughter and socialite, Amanda Fortini goes missing after a swim and never returns. Someone is leaving pieces of coral marked with Obeah symbols for death at people’s houses. Conservationist Lily Calder, goddaughter of Lady Vee, finds her boat repeatedly vandalised. The gardener is behaving oddly and a luxury yacht is moored up most suspiciously.

The various threads of the story come together to an entertaining, if not necessarily convincing conclusion.

The island is described beautifully and definitely makes you want to pack your bags for the Caribbean. Lady Vee and Detective Soloman Nile are both likeable and interesting characters.

If you like a classic whodunnit Murder in Paradise style them you will enjoy this. A quick and enjoyable read.