Day 381: Death on Lindisfarne

I got a free copy of this novel in a giveaway from Goodreads. I was attracted to it because of its setting (I can’t resist novels set on islands), and frankly its cover. Unfortunately, however, I found the mystery to be mediocre at best.

Aidan Davison and his eight-year-old daughter Melangell are on a pilgrimage of sorts. Aidan’s wife died about six months ago, and Aidan is taking Melangell to one of the places she loved best, the island of Lindisfarne off the Northumbrian coast. They are scheduled to attend a course on the history of Lindisfarne given by Reverend Lucy Pargeter.

Lucy is traveling with Peter, a student, and Rachel, a troubled teen who has recently given up drugs. Other attendees are two middle-aged Oxbridge women, a fussy older couple, an evangelist who shows signs of wanting to take over the tour, and his worshipful assistant.

Lindisfarne is a tidal island, which means it can only be accessed by the bridge or across the sands when the tide is out. Aidan and his daughter decide to walk, and on the trek across the sands see on the shore a woman struggling with another person. When they approach the spot, Melangell finds an earring that turns out to belong to Rachel, but they aren’t able to identify her opponent. In any case, Rachel’s subsequent behavior is erratic. Lucy is very concerned about her.

Soon Rachel is found dead, apparently from drowning. The police are inclined to treat the death as a suicide, although the water rescue folks doubt that her body could have drifted to where she was found if she jumped into the water from any height. Soon, though, the autopsy shows she was strangled.

As far as the mystery is concerned, there is a long central section of the book during which no detection is going on, just a lot of speculation. Nothing turns up to point to any of the suspects. In fact, the most suspicious character is involved in an event that could exonerate him. Although it can be frustrating to read a mystery where evidence or suspicion arbitrarily seems to point to everyone, it is even more frustrating to have no evidence at all. When the definitive clue finally arrives, the main characters stupidly miss it, even though it makes the motive and the culprit immediately obvious.

More troublesome, though, is that the entire murder depends on Rachel not telling Lucy something that I couldn’t imagine not being said almost right away. Yes, one sentence at the logical time would have either prevented the murder or made the solution obvious.

But these are problems that only become obvious once the case is solved. Characterization and behavior are problems from the start. The novel is only adequately written, including some poor writing. What bothered me more were all the characters’ exaggerated reactions. Lucy is almost frantic about Rachel from the first scene, when she has just wandered off somewhere–not concerned, frantic. All the characters are constantly starting, stiffening, or being startled. Really, how often does a normal person start? Characters routinely overreact for everything. All this is an artificial attempt to interject drama.

The best I can say for the novel is it made me want to visit Lindisfarne. Sampson obviously had things she wanted to say about its history, however, and the only way she could think of to get them in was through short lectures as part of the course. Besides providing a little color, however, the lectures aren’t really relevant to the story, and repeated verbatim, are far too short to constitute any kind of believable course. I don’t think I’ll be reading more of this series.