Skeleton Island (1967)

1967 Michael Joseph blurb:

<>When Colin Spalding agreed to stay with his father in the old lighthouse he had rented for the summer, he did so reluctantly—and only because his father’s second wife would be there.

For Colin believed himself to be in love with the beautiful Fiona. His attentions were diverted, however, by the arrival of Laura Gavin, acting as temporary matron with the small prep school which had rented a local hotel—and it took little persuasion for him to take up the post of junior master at the school. There he met a former acquaintance, Ronald Ferrars, with whom his step-mother had once had a ship-board romance. But when Ferrars’ body was found at the old lighthouse, Colin was a suspect for murder…

Fortunately, Laura was at hand to persuade her employer, Dame Beatrice Adela Lestrange Bradley, to visit the scene and uncover the unsavoury truth…

My review:

At first glance, this tale of illicit semi-incestuous love affairs and smuggling on a barren island seems good—a mixture of 'romance' and thriller. The whole, however, goes very quickly downhill—despite, or because of, kidnapped children linked to South American revolutions, naked bodies in lighthouses, and ornithologists—before ending in one of the poorest dénouements in a Mitchell novel—even Death of a Burrowing Mole is better. Note similarities to Faintley Speaking, The Murder of Busy Lizzie, and "A Light on Murder".

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