The Lighthouse

Combe Island, a small outcrop off the Cornish coast, exists to give the powerful and the well known a place to disappear for a while. Guests are carefully vetted, the staff is small, and the island's privacy is guarded closely. That calm ends when one of its distinguished visitors is found hanged from the old lighthouse, and the death looks very much like murder.

Commander Adam Dalgliesh is sent to handle a case that demands discretion, though the timing is poor for him and for the team he brings along. He is unsure where his relationship with Emma Lavenham is heading. Detective Kate Miskin, his most trusted officer, is working through an emotional crisis of her own. Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith is talented and ambitious, and he resents answering to a woman.

With the island cut off and a closed circle of residents and visitors to question, the investigation is already delicate when a second violent death occurs. Suspicion spreads through a community that prizes its seclusion, and the inquiry itself is put at risk. Dalgliesh finds himself facing a threat more insidious than murder.

This is a Dalgliesh mystery, the same series that inspired the Acorn TV adaptation. James builds her story around a confined setting and a cast of people with something to hide, and she pays as much attention to their motives and feelings as to the puzzle of who is responsible.