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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
A whodunit set in a fascinating part of the world,
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This review is from: Death in the Andamans (Hardcover)
M M Kaye is best known for her India romantic epic "The Far Pavilions" as well as "Shadow Of The Moon" and "Trade Wind", all of which I have read and enjoyed. However she also wrote several murder mysteries set in different parts of the world that she had visited in her well-travelled life. Death In The Andamans is available on its own or as part of the collection of three "Death In" books by M M Kaye published as "House Of Shade".
First things first, where are the Andamans? I suppose I had a vague feeling they were one of those tiny dots on the map in the pacific somewhere, or perhaps around Japan or something. Shows what I know - they are a small group of islands in the Bay of Bengal. M M Kaye had visited them when younger and been marooned briefly on one of the islands after a storm and this gave her the idea for the novel. Death In The Andamans deals with - what else? - an unexplained death. The owner of a coconut plantation, Ferrers Shilto, is in a cluster of small boats along with seven other people in a huge storm. The boats capsize, everyone is hanging on for dear life but when they are rescued sometime later Ferrers is missing. He turns up as a corpse brought in by the waves a day later - but did he drown? This book has a lot of people in it - not only the eight on the boats but various other people, all of whom, it seems, may have had reason to murder Shilto or may have confused him with someone else that they wanted to murder. The story is partially narrated by two girls, Copper Randal and her friend Valerie; Valerie lives on the island with her stepfather, Copper is visiting for Christmas. Valerie is engaged to Charles who is in the army that is stationed on the Andamans, Copper has found herself rather intrigued by Nick Tarrent who is visiting the island from a naval ship and gets stranded on the island during the storm. Although billed on the front of the book as a "romance" I wouldn't really say that's particularly accurate - the love story isn't particularly significant and just bumbles along in the background. The cast of characters, being so vast, means that we don't really get to know any of them that well. The action takes place at a good pace and we're never bored but I did find myself getting a bit swamped by all those people with murder on their minds. People also seemed to speak in a "jolly hockeysticks" fashion which perhaps was accurate but seemed rather quaint. People talked about the "beastly weather" and I wondered if I'd fallen into an Enid Blyton book. The point of view sometimes changed rather confusingly mid-stream as well. The eventual unmasking of the perpetrator was perhaps a little disappointing - although clues had been left for the reader it's unlikely anyone would have guessed for sure who it was, and it could equally well have been one of many other people. Still, it was an interesting book purely in terms of the description of the Andaman Islands and a look back into the different lives people led at the tail end of the British Empire.
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