There are two threads in this episode of the Ben Kitto series set on the Scilly Isles. I like that one of them is someone catching up with Ben from his past as an undercover police officer in London. I’m not really bothered by the ‘how many murders can we have within a small island community?’ thing but it is nice to see an author nodding to the fact that sometimes the crimes arrive in paradise from elsewhere. But the other thread of the book is the discovery of a skeleton during building work that looks a lot like it did originate on the island in the not so distant past.

I liked the way the first thread unfolded, mostly away from the Scilly Isles, and I never felt the resolution of it was a foregone conclusion. The problem with spending so much time on that thread was that the story on the island didn’t feel as fleshed out as it could have been to me. I wanted to know more about the characters involved with that. The pieces went together well but it felt like the puzzle was solved before I’d really got to grips with the story. There were lots of characters who didn’t get much page time.