I found it quite refreshing to have Barker and Llewelyn trade their usual London haunts for a country house on a remote island in the Scillys. Hell Bay is Will Thomas's tribute to Agatha Christie. Trapping a group of people on a remote island and then killing them off one by one has definite overtones of Christie's And Then There Were None.
How well does the author do with a locked room (island) mystery? Very well indeed. I didn't have a clue who the killer was. All I could do was settle down, start learning about each one of the guests, observing their behaviors... and be thankful that there was no way I would wind up as one of the corpses.
Although very familiar with her stories, I am not an Agatha Christie fan, so I do not know how a fan would react to this book. I am, however, a Barker and Llewelyn fan, and it was a real treat to take these two out of their element and have them solve an extremely complicated and dangerous mystery on their own. Llewelyn's mystery-solving acumen grows with each new book, and Barker-- who has always been quite the iconoclast-- fits in rather well with the rich and those pesky government types. Who would have thought? I can't wait to see what these two do next!
How well does the author do with a locked room (island) mystery? Very well indeed. I didn't have a clue who the killer was. All I could do was settle down, start learning about each one of the guests, observing their behaviors... and be thankful that there was no way I would wind up as one of the corpses.
Although very familiar with her stories, I am not an Agatha Christie fan, so I do not know how a fan would react to this book. I am, however, a Barker and Llewelyn fan, and it was a real treat to take these two out of their element and have them solve an extremely complicated and dangerous mystery on their own. Llewelyn's mystery-solving acumen grows with each new book, and Barker-- who has always been quite the iconoclast-- fits in rather well with the rich and those pesky government types. Who would have thought? I can't wait to see what these two do next!
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