Customer Reviews

Death in Zanzibar

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This terrific installment in M. M. Kaye's "Death in" series is a fun, entertaining read that is also written with intelligence and wit. Kaye weaves a spell with exotic islands, mysterious characters, and of course, true romance. It is even better if you first read Kaye's exceptional novel "Trade Wind", as "Death in Zanzibar" can be taken as a sequel to it.

If you like old-fashioned mystery and romance set in an exotic locale, this is a very fun read. M.M. Kaye wrote several of these atmospheric mystery romance novels which always incorporated some exotic setting she had been to as she and her husband moved all over the world. In the forward she writes that it is a Zanzibar which no longer exists, but one she saw and wanted to share before memories of it had faded into the sunset.

There is a light and entertaining feel to the overall story and a very likable heroine in Dany Ashton. The characters are colorful and well defined and fit right in to the time period. Lash is a young man-about-town who slowly comes into his own helping Dany with a ruse during their trip to Zanaibar and the House of Shade, where the mystery of why her hotel room was broken into and her passport taken deepens into murder and more.

Dany is sweet and endearing as she shows old-fashioned bravado during the course of the mystery. She will emerge from her mother's shadow and come into her own just as Lash does. There is, of course, an innocent and growing romance between the two and the reader knows how this will end long before they do. Kaye makes good use of the exotic locale as we see it through the eyes of her heroine, who is also seeing it for the first time.

This is a very fun and entertaining mystery with the values and mores of a bygone era. Perhaps the best way to describe it would be to say it has much the same feel as watching one of those early 1930's mystery films set in an exotic locale; the kind you catch late at night when you can't sleep and enjoy all the more because it was a surprise.

All of Kaye's mysteries fit this bill and this one is perhaps my favorite. If you like your mystery and romance a bit on the old-fashioned side, you will enjoy this greatly, as I did. A fun summer read.

This is quite an odd book, it is really a sequel, of sorts, to one of Kaye's most famous books, Trade Winds. In that book set in Mid nineteenth century, the reprobate Rory (emory) Frost, had married Hero, but left behind a huge cache of gold which they believed cursed, unlucky and completely unwanted. They left it for future generations to decide.

And this brings us to the start of this mystery novel, as part of his will Rory Frost requested that his papers not be released for 70 years, this included a strange letter giving a clue to the treasure. His descendent, Tyson Frost, finds a reference to where the letter is, and gets his step-daughter Dany to bring the letter out to him in Zanzibar. Her trip is Fraught with problems, someone is trying to set her up by stealing her passport and planting a gun on her. Then the lawyer whom she just visited is brutally murdered. She is forced to assume a new identity and with the help of a man she has just met, Lash, she makes the long flight to Zanzibar which takes her via Kenya and some long layovers.

Even once in the House of Shade in Zanzibar she is still not safe as murders continue, setting her up, but her room is ransacked and the secret letter stolen. She is set up for a murder and it is only dumb luck which saves her. There are suspects all around and the clues, while there are not helpful to solving who and what happens, especially when it turns out one of the murders is a red-herring.

This is more a romance than anything, as Lash and Dany fall in love with one another, only to have Dany's love challenged by the belief that he is in fact the murderer.

This book staggers around a bit and I didn't find it up to Kaye's usual standard. Her book Far Pavillions is one of my favourite books ever, while this one is really just a piece of fluff. A good fun read, but nothing I would want to read again.

The characters haven't 'aged' well. Perhaps it is in the nature of writing contemporary novels but the Dany is rather weak and ineffectual, and Lash a bit too smooth and careless for my liking.

Nice to have read it but really a 3.5 star book, not good but not by any means bad either.

This mystery is some young pretty but a little bit stupid (sorry about my expression. but if you read the first half, you will agree with me. At first I was reaaly irriated by the stupidness and passiveness though she's insulted and faced the danger, and later I laughed at her reaction in front of the killer) girls adventure from London to Zanzibar, Tanzania in West Africa.
The strong point which attracts the many people is that the people in this fiction are alive and very interesting, especially Lash and Tyson. After the first half. I couldn't drop this book from my hands, and sat up all night (so tired but I could't help it. It's FUN!). I kept thinking who the killer was, and the progress of reasoning is also a great pleasure to me.

This book is a really grest mystery which is seldom found out, but the reason why I gave 4 stars instead five is, you know, the heroine. You know, that style is no more attractive. And rather that irriates many people (think about Melanie Griffith in Working girl. That type get to lead the situation at first but finally turns to the male hero after facing the deadlock, only becoming a traditional passive heorine. Come on! No one likes that kind of girl nowadays!)

You know, I liked this book. It's not Trade Wind, which I loved, and I was frustrated that it didn't refer back more to the pre-history of this story and talk more about the original characters (Rory and Hero). They are truly two of my favorite people in romantic fiction. Regardless, I found the whole Lash/Dany romance to be charming. Some of the dialogue I found as anthropologically interesting as if it were Inuit. I mean, did people really talk that way then?? And if so, how interesting...

This was quite a fun book! It spans from England to Zanzibar (which makes it all the more interesting for fans of travel and foreign places).
The mystery really develops during the second half of the book as we learn more about the "why." The "who" gets trimmed down as the book goes on but there's still a pool of suspects to draw from.
I wasn't entirely surprised by "who dunnit" as I'd half expected him/her/them earlier in the book (but wasn't at all sure!), but as the last chapters began to unfold I found myself suspecting another character. So, I was surprised, and there were some other surprises, too.
A few areas I was a bit confused by, but I think that was part of the point based on which character was doing the explaining.
I found the author's descriptions very vivid and detailed but not cumbersome or overwhelming. And I felt the characters were drawn well.
If you like Agatha Christie mysteries you'd probably like this book. The style is different from Christie's, but that's part of the charm because you aren't sure how it'll end up!

Another of M.M. Kaye's great 'Death in' series. I enjoy the old British empire settings, exotic locales under British rule. All the usual British types seeing the sights, whispering in the moonlight, plotting murder, keeping secrets. The historical facts and physical decriptions are superb. Lots of fun reading.

Not for sticklers who insist on political correctness! First published in 1959, the story contains many stereotypes of the fifties and earlier. Women talk in a harebrained manner (though deep down they're no dummies). The gay secretary is over-the-top camp. The good-looking hero we're supposed to admire drinks like a fish and is often rude to women. The young heroine wishes men would protect her.

But I'm always willing to transport to another time and place, and go with the flow for a few hundred pages. As a time traveler of sorts, I was able to enjoy Death in Zanzibar thoroughly.

Young Dany Ashton has lead a sheltered life, having been raised by a prim and proper great aunt in Hampshire. Her beautiful mother has been too busy marrying and remarrying to tend to Dany. But now Dany has an invitation to visit her mother in Zanzibar, where the latest husband has a magnificent home. Dany is just old enough that her great aunt can't stop her.

But all sorts of complications arise. In London and in Zanzibar, people are getting murdered all around our appalled heroine. Someone wants something Dany has, or may have - enough to kill.

The plot is improbable, but the dialog, scenes and asides are lots of fun. And M.M. Kaye has a terrific sense of place. The scent of cloves and frangipani is almost palpable.

M.M. Kaye had an Army husband who got one exotic posting after another. She was a fervent note-taker, and later wrote a whodunit for every location. Some are better than others, but as a collection they offer an amazing experience of adventure, romance and lost worlds.

Rather run-of-the-mill British-style (i.e., improbable persons doing improbable things) murder mystery with the usual, somewhat tired cast of supposedly interesting characters in an exotic location. Could have used less of the British jet-set and more Zanzibar. "Trade Wind" (also set in Zanzibar) is better.