My
review:The Murder of Busy Lizzie (1973)
My
review:
"Witches and warlocks, bird-watchers and thugs! What sort of place is this island?"
Infinitely more successful than the earlier Skeleton
Island (1967), which also dealt with the same
ingredients—islands, smugglers, drowning / falls off cliffs,
lighthouses, and ornithologists—this is good,
straight-forward, fast-paced and exciting Mitchell, the plot
reasonably complex and well-articulated, although the murderer's
identity is arbitrary, with several more attempted murders thrown
in for good luck. The island, "called Great Skua because
of a theory, not particularly borne out by fact, that from the
mainland it resembled in shape and general colouring that
predatory sea-bird ... was nothing more than a vast piece of
granite rock ... but ... looked about as welcoming as a
prison", has good landscape, with caves, coves, cliffs,
and tides, all profitable for great explorations; and the
ingredients of the story, including gun-running (as the island "'must
have been a smugglers' paradise at one time, and I believe it
still is'"), white witchcraft, desecrated graves, and
ornithologists, are well-combined. The only problem is that Dame
Beatrice only begins to function in Chapter 9 (although she and
Laura, staying in the house where, unbeknownst to them, the
murder was committed, appear earlier)—most of the story seen
through the eyes of the victim's nephew and niece. Otherwise, an
agreeable and diverting story.
Image provided by Jason Hall.