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The Barnes & Noble Review
P. D. James's 13th mystery featuring Scotland Yard's Commander Adam Dalgliesh proves to be the master detective's most unlucky case to date; while investigating the homicide of a world-renowned author on a privately owned island of the Cornish coast, Dalgliesh is confronted with something even more terrifying than the brutal murder…

Combe Island, once a strategic base for slave-trading pirates, now serves as an inconspicuous refuge for some the most influential people in the world: a starkly beautiful place where scientists, politicians, diplomats, and other distinguished guests can relax in privacy and total security. But when Nathan Oliver, considered one of the world's greatest novelists, is found hanging from Combe Island's lighthouse, Dalgliesh -- known for his discretion and his ability to quickly solving sensitive cases -- is called to the island to get to the bottom of the heinous murder.

The case, however, is complicated from the very start, with personal issues involving Dalgliesh's depleted squad: Detective Inspector Kate Miskin and Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith must somehow work through their mutual antagonism, and Dalgliesh must make some life-altering decisions concerning Emma Lavenham, his part-time lover...

As thrilling and delightfully complicated as any Agatha Christie or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mystery, James's The Lighthouse will keep readers hopelessly speculating about the identity of the killer until the very end. With a cast of diverse and brilliantly fleshed out island inhabitants/suspects, James's intricate and superbly structured plotlines (which include some absolute bombshells regarding Dalgliesh!) make The Lighthouse arguably the best Adam Dalgliesh mystery to date -- a murderous masterwork from the Queen of Crime. Paul Goat Allen

From the Publisher

A subtle and powerful work of contemporary fiction.

Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered.

Commander Adam Dalgliesh is called in to solve the mystery quickly and discreetly, but at a difficult time for him and his depleted team. Dalgliesh is uncertain about his future with Emma Lavenham, the woman he loves; Detective Inspector Kate Miskin has her own emotional problems; and the ambitious Sergeant Francis Benton-Smith is worried about working under Kate. Hardly has the team begun to unravel the complicated motives of the suspects than there is a second brutal killing, and the whole investigation is jeopardized when Dalgliesh is faced with a danger more insidious and as potentially fatal as murder.

This eagerly awaited successor to the international bestseller The Murder Room displays all the qualities that lovers of P. D. James’s novels the world over have come to expect: sensitive characterization, an exciting and superbly structured plot and vivid evocation of place.


From the Hardcover edition.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

The Lighthouse is too rooted in genre conventions to count originality as its strong suit. But it has deviousness to burn, and it also offers other enticements. It's the kind of book that boasts a wryly humorous Scrabble scene, not to mention a Scrabble-lover's vocabulary: Ms. James makes ready use of words like abseil, belay, symphysis and meiosis. It's a book that serves up figurative red herring as well as melon balls in orange sauce. Not a menu goes unmentioned … it is a sturdy installment in a well-honed series, which is a concept that even its characters understand.

Publishers Weekly

If-as some reviewers have speculated-The Lighthouse marks the end of James's 13-book mystery series about policeman/poet Adam Dalgliesh, at least in this artful and gripping audio version the commander is going out in style. Gifted veteran actor Keating rises above some familiar plot elements and obvious padding to create a convincing atmosphere set on an isolated private island where burnt-out leaders in the fields of business, politics and art go to rest and recuperate. Keating delineates James's many characters sharply and smoothly-from the top men in the police and foreign office who initiate the investigation through the three very different detectives who show up to probe the mysterious death of a noted and much-disliked novelist and find themselves in the middle of another murder. Dalgliesh is even calmer than usual, much of his mind still back in London with his new love interest. Insp. Kate Miskin is also preoccupied by the attentions of a former colleague, and Sgt. Francis Benton-Smith-his eye on the prize of promotion-sees Miskin as a hurdle in the road to success. Dedicated James fans should find this pleasant listening. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover (Reviews, Oct. 17). (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Steve Forbes - Forbes Magazine

Commander Adam Dalgliesh is faced with a sensitive seaside case that concerns a noted novelist found hanging from a lighthouse on exclusive Combe Island, a place owned by a trust to which high-powered people come to unwind. Dalgliesh and two colleagues, rather than local police, are brought in to investigate because Combe Island is to be the setting for an upcoming international summit meeting. Before the case is closed, Dalgliesh comes down with SARS and stories surface of three German soldiers killed there during WWII, as well as of the simultaneous probable murder of an island inhabitant. (10 Apr 2006)

Library Journal

A small group is staying at a manor house on a small Cornish island. One member is found dead, obviously murdered. The cast of characters includes a clergyman who has lost his faith, a doctor who has lost his professional self-confidence, diplomats, the murdered man's daughter, and her fianc . Scotland Yard commander Adam Dalgliesh and his team are called in to investigate. The dead man was brilliant, manipulative, and abusive, and the island's inhabitants are quirky. Inspector Kate Miskin takes over the investigation when Adam falls ill, but high fever or not, it is Adam who identifies the murderer. Like all of James's works, the book is well written and enjoyable, but there are many oddities, and too much time is devoted to flashbacks. Despite the extensive back stories, the characters seem flat, like figures being moved around a game board. The crime is solved by what appears to be divine inspiration, not the collection of evidence. Charles Keating gives a satisfactory reading, and despite its many flaws, The Lighthouse is a pleasant listening experience. Although far from James's best, this title should be in high demand. Recommended for all collections.-I. Pour-El, Des Moines Area Community Coll., Boone, IA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The doyenne of British mystery celebrates her 85th birthday by packing off Adam Dalgliesh and two members of his Metropolitan Murder Squad to investigate the violent death of a famous novelist on a remote island off the Cornish coast. For 75 years, Combe Island has been administered by a charitable trust as a restorative refuge for distinguished citizens. Now its lighthouse seems destined for notoriety as the place where novelist Nathan Oliver was launched into eternity at the end of a rope. In the hope of keeping a lid on the unsavory publicity, Dalgliesh, DI Kate Miskin and Sgt. Francis Benton-Smith are dispatched from the City. They find the island's staff and its handful of other visitors, including Oliver's daughter Miranda and his copyeditor Dennis Tremlett, shocked but hardly grief-stricken. Well-hated Oliver's murder (or was it a suicide or a bizarre accident someone wanted to look like murder?) inevitably opens the doors to secrets long locked away. James doesn't stint on the old-fashioned complications of mechanics and motives. But her most telling details are the quietest-a police record, a lost vial of blood, a tag from Christopher Marlowe, a telltale cough-each of which will take its place in the resolution. Although the story is briefer than James's recent double-deckers (The Murder Room, 2003, etc.), readers will still revel in her matchless fullness of characterization. A stay on Combe Island really is tonic. First printing of 300,000

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Reading Group Guide
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• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Reading Group Guide

1. Early on, we are given psychological profiles of three main characters who have figured in earlier James novels: Adam Dalgliesh, Kate Miskin, and Francis Benton-Smith. How are these three different in their family backgrounds, and how are they similar in temperament? What do they have in common? How are they each well adapted to the requirements of their profession?

2. Whom would you consider the main character in the story? Does the narrative style cause you to identify with a single main character, or does it give equal access to the minds of all characters? Is Dalgliesh more emotionally remote than Kate? Is Kate the person with whom the reader is most closely engaged? Among the islanders and visitors, which characters are most likable?

3. Kate’s unexpected romantic liaison with Piers Tarrant is mentioned early in the novel; later she comes to recognize that her love for Adam Dalgliesh is hopeless. Dalgliesh’s love for Emma and his inability to spend time with her cause him a great deal of anxiety throughout the story. The romance plot for James’s main characters is always subordinate to a more urgent crime plot. What are the effects of these subplots on the reader?

4. Nathan Oliver is noted, in book 1, chapter 3, to have aged prematurely: “Something -- was it confidence, arrogance, hope? -- had seeped out of him. . . . What was wrong with the man? He was only sixty-eight, hardly more than late middle-aged by modern reckoning, but he looked over eighty” [p. 52]. Oliver is outraged at the loss of his blood sample [p. 50], and Emily Holcombe wonders whether he might be going mad [p. 35]. Why does James raise so many questionsabout Oliver’s physical and psychological state before the reader learns that he is dead? What does his recurrent dream suggest [p. 82]? Does this dream, as well as Oliver’s reaction to it, present a case for suicide?

5. In the opening chapters leading up to the first murder, James provides careful background histories for all of the characters on the island. Which characters seem to have the strongest motives for murdering Nathan Oliver? Are there any characters that can be ruled out immediately?

6. Oliver is drawn as a monster of selfishness who has been ruthless about using and discarding other people according to his own needs. He intends to disinherit Miranda and to fire Tremlett if they persist in their intention to marry, even though they intend to continue in his service as they have in the past. Tremlett tells Miranda, “He won’t let us go. He won’t let our happiness upset his whole life, the way he lives, how he works, what he’s used to” [pp. 59–60]. Yet Oliver, who is so completely lacking in human empathy, is a great novelist. Tremlett says, “He’s a conduit. Emotion flows through him. He can describe but he can’t feel, not for other people” [p. 60]. Is it possible to simultaneously be a great artist and a monstrous human being? How can the two qualities coexist in one person?

7. The widower Rupert Maycroft seems overwhelmed by the responsibilities he faces as administrator of the Combe Island Trust once Nathan Oliver is found murdered. The doctor Guy Staveley also faces an enormous challenge in having to tend to two patients with SARS. Why are these men so timid in terms of their own abilities, and how do they perform under pressure? Is the crisis on the island ultimately good for both of them?

8. As the plot proceeds, are all the clues provided to make it possible to guess or deduce the killer? If so, at what point is it possible, and on what grounds?

9. P. D. James’s love of English poetry and literature comes across in her frequent quoting of such writers as John Donne [p. 59], Virginia Woolf [p. 134], and others. How does this receptivity to poetic language make itself felt in her narrative style and descriptive language?

10. What social or personal crimes have resulted in destroying the lives of Daniel Padgett, Millie Tranter, and Adrian Boyde? How do these characters shed light on enduring problems in contemporary society?

11. In addition to the fearful aspects of her murder plot, James brings in another contemporary anxiety when Adam Dalgliesh contracts a life-threatening case of SARS from Dr. Speidel. Discuss how this detail, along with others, allows the story -- a fiction set on a remote island -- to remind us of the dangers of life in the real world.

12. In P. D. James’s novels, the setting is usually of great importance in creating a mood as well as in providing plot details. What mood does the setting of Combe Island provide in The Lighthouse? Does the island provide, eventually, a healing and restorative function for various characters? For the three highly stressed detectives of the story, what are the positive and negative effects of their stay on Combe?

13. James seems to be interested in people who are so consumed by their work -- and are indeed so good at their work -- that their intimate relationships suffer accordingly. Which of the characters in the novel would you include in this category, and is there hope that this imbalance between love and work can be resolved for them?

14. What are the most admirable qualities of Kate Miskin, Francis Benton-Smith, and Adam Dalgliesh? Do Kate and Francis seem to have the skill, talent, and sensibility that have allowed Dalgliesh to rise to the top of his profession? Is Kate the real heroine of the story?

15. How does the ending reflect upon the romance between Adam Dalgliesh and Emma Lavenham? What steps might be taken in the next novel?

16. What temperamental qualities do Daniel Padgett and Nathan Oliver have in common? Do these qualities create a sort of family resemblance between the father and his unacknowledged son?

17. James has written, “The classical detective story is rather like the modern morality play. It can provide catharsis, a means by which both writer and reader exorcise irrational feelings of anxiety or guilt. The basic moral premise, the sanctity of life, is also an attraction as is the solution of the plot at the end of the book. The classical detective story affirms our belief that we live in a rational and generally benevolent universe.” In what ways do you see James as a writer of “the classical detective story,” and in what ways does she not fit this model? Is James a believer in “a generally benevolent universe,” or is her vision of society a darker one?

Read an Excerpt

Read a Sample Chapter

The Lighthouse

Random House

Chapter One

1

Commander Adam Dalgliesh was not unused to being urgently summoned to non-scheduled meetings with unspecified people at inconvenient times, but usually with one purpose in common: he could be confident that somewhere there lay a dead body awaiting his attention. There were other urgent calls, other meetings, sometimes at the highest level. Dalgliesh, as a permanent ADC to the Commissioner, had a number of functions which, as they grew in number and importance, had become so ill-defined that most of his colleagues had given up trying to define them. But this meeting, called in Assistant Commissioner Harkness's office on the seventh floor of New Scotland Yard at ten-fifty-five on the morning of Saturday, 23 October, had, from his first entry into the room, the unmistakable presaging of murder. This had nothing to do with a certain serious tension on the faces turned towards him; a departmental debacle would have caused greater concern. It was rather that unnatural death always provoked a peculiar unease, an uncomfortable realisation that there were still some things that might not be susceptible to bureaucratic control.

There were only three men awaiting him and Dalgliesh was surprised to see Alexander Conistone of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He liked Conistone, who was one of the few eccentrics remaining in an increasingly conformist and politicised service. Conistone had acquired a reputation for crisis management. This was partly founded on his belief that there was no emergency that was not amenable to precedent or departmental regulations, but when these orthodoxies failed, he could reveal a dangerous capacity for imaginative initiatives which, by any bureaucratic logic, deserved to end in disaster but never did. Dalgliesh, for whom few of the labyrinths of Westminster bureaucracy were wholly unfamiliar, had earlier decided that this dichotomy of character was inherited. Generations of Conistones had been soldiers. The foreign fields of Britain's imperialis- tic past were enriched by the bodies of unmemorialised victims of previous Conistones' crises management. Even Conistone's eccen- tric appearance reflected a personal ambiguity. Alone among his colleagues, he dressed with the careful pinstriped conformity of a civil servant of the Thirties while, with his strong bony face, mottled cheeks and hair with the resilient waywardness of straw, he looked like a farmer.

He was seated next to Dalgliesh opposite one of the wide windows. Having sat through the first ten minutes of the present meeting with an unusual economy of words, he sat, his chair a little tilted, complacently surveying the panorama of towers and spires, lit by a transitory unseasonable morning sun. Of the four men in the room--Conistone, Adam Dalgliesh, Assistant Commissioner Harkness and a fresh-faced boy from MI5 who had been introduced as Colin Reeves--Conistone, the one most concerned with the matter in hand, had so far said the least while Reeves, preoccupied with the effort of remembering what was being said without the humiliating expedient of being seen to take notes, hadn't yet spoken. Now Conistone stirred himself for a summing up.

"Murder would be the most embarrassing for us, suicide hardly less so in the circumstances. Accidental death we could probably live with. Given the victim, there's bound to be publicity whichever it is, but it should be manageable unless this is murder. The problem is that we haven't much time. No date has been fixed yet, but the PM would like to arrange this top-secret international get-together in early January. A good time. Parliament not sitting, nothing much happens just after Christmas, nothing is expected to happen. The PM seems to have set his mind on Combe. So you'll take on the case, Adam? Good."

Before Dalgliesh could reply, Harkness broke in, "The security rating, if it comes off, couldn't be higher."

Dalgliesh thought, And even if you're in the know, which I doubt, you have no intention of telling me who will be meeting at this top-secret conference, or why. Security was always on a need-to-know basis. He could make his guesses, but had no particular curiosity. On the other hand, he was being asked to investigate a violent death and there were things he needed to be told.

Before Colin Reeves had time to realise that this was his cue to intervene, Conistone said, "All that will be taken care of, of course. We're not expecting problems. There was a similar situation some years ago -- before your time, Harkness -- when a VIP politician thought he'd like a respite from his protection officer and booked two weeks on Combe. The visitor stood the silence and solitude for two days before realising that his life was meaningless without his red boxes. I should have thought that that was the message Combe was established to convey, but he didn't get it. No, I don't think we'll be worrying our friends south of the Thames."

Well, that, at least, was a relief. To have the security services involved was always a complication. Dalgliesh reflected that the secret service, like the monarchy, in yielding up its mystique in response to public enthusiasm for greater openness, seemed to have lost some of that half-ecclesiastical patina of authority bestowed on those who dealt in esoteric mysteries. Today its head was known by name and pictured in the press, the previous head had actually written her autobiography, and its headquarters, an eccentric oriental-looking monument to modernity which dominated its stretch of the south bank of the Thames, seemed designed to attract rather than repel curiosity. To surrender mystique had its disadvantages; an organisation came to be regarded like any other bureaucracy, staffed by the same fallible human beings and liable to the same cock-ups. But he expected no problems with the secret service. The fact that MI5 was represented at middle-grade level suggested that this single death on an offshore island was among the least of their present concerns.

He said, "I can't go inadequately briefed. You've given me nothing except who's dead, where he died and apparently how. Tell me about the island. Where exactly is it?"

Harkness was in one of his more difficult moods, his ill humour imperfectly concealed by self-importance and a tendency to verbosity. The large map on the table was a little crooked. Frowning, he aligned it more accurately with the edge of the table, pushed it towards Dalgliesh and stabbed it with his forefinger.

"It's here. Combe Island. Off the coast of Cornwall, about twenty miles south-west of Lundy Island and roughly twelve miles from the mainland, Pentworthy in this case. Newquay is the nearest large town." He looked over at Conistone. "You'd better carry on. It's more your baby than ours."

Conistone spoke directly to Dalgliesh. "I'll waste a little time on the history. It explains Combe and if you don't know it you may start under a disadvantage. The island was owned for over four hundred years by the Holcombe family, who acquired it in the sixteenth century, although no one seems clear exactly how. Probably a Holcombe rowed out with a few armed retainers, hoisted his personal standard and took it over. There can't have been much competition. The title was later ratified by Henry the Eighth once he'd got rid of the Mediterranean pirates who'd established it as a base for their slave-trading raids along the Devon and Cornish coasts. After that Combe lay more or less neglected until the eighteenth century, when the family began to take an interest in it, and visited occasionally to look at the bird-life or spend the day picnicking. Then a Gerald Holcombe, born in the late eighteen hundreds, decided to use the island for family holidays. He restored the cottages and, in 1912, built a house and additional accommodation for the staff. The family went there every summer in those heady days before the First World War. The war changed everything. The two elder sons were killed, one in France, the other at Gallipoli. The Holcombes are the kind of family who die in wars, not make money from them. That left only the youngest, Henry, who was consumptive and unfit for military service. Apparently, after the death of his brothers he was oppressed by a sense of general unworthiness and had no particular wish to inherit. The money hadn't come from land but from fortunate investments, and by the late Twenties they had more or less dried up. So in 1930 he set up a charitable trust with what was left, found some wealthy supporters and handed over the island and the property. His idea was that it should be used as a place of rest and seclusion for men in positions of responsibility who needed to get away from the rigours of their professional lives."

Now, for the first time, he bent down to open his briefcase and took out a file with a security marking. Rummaging among the documents, he brought out a single sheet of paper. "I've got the exact wording here. It makes Henry Holcombe's intentions clear. For men who undertake the dangerous and arduous business of exercising high responsibility in the service of the Crown and of their country, whether in the armed forces, politics, science, industry or the arts, and who require a restorative period of solitude, silence and peace. Engagingly typical of its age, isn't it? No mention of women, of course. This was 1930, remember. However, the accepted convention is held to apply, that the word 'men' embraces women. They take a maximum of five visitors, whom they accommodate at their choice either in the main house or in one of the stone cottages. Basically what Combe Island offers is peace and security. In the last few decades the latter has become probably the more important. People who want time to think can go there without their protection officers in the knowledge that they will be safe and completely undisturbed. There's a helicopter pad for bringing them in, and the small harbour is the only possible landing place by sea. No casual visitors are ever allowed and even mobile phones are forbidden -- they wouldn't get a signal there anyway. They keep a very low profile. People who go there are generally on personal recommendation, either from a Trustee or from a previous or regular visitor. You can see its advantage for the PM's purpose."

Reeves blurted out, "What's wrong with Chequers?"

The others turned on him the brightly interested gaze of adults prepared to humour a precocious child.

Conistone said, "Nothing. An agreeable house with, I understand, every comfort. But guests who are invited to Chequers tend to get noticed. Isn't that the purpose of their going there?"

Dalgliesh asked, "How did Downing Street get to know about the island?"

Conistone slid the paper back into his file. "Through one of the PM's newly ennobled chums. He went to Combe to recover from the dangerous and arduous responsibility of adding one more grocery chain to his empire and another billion to his personal fortune."

"There are some permanent staff, presumably. Or do the VIPs do their own washing up?"

"There's the secretary, Rupert Maycroft, previously a solicitor in Warnborough. We've had to confide in him and, of course, inform the Trustees that Number Ten would be grateful if some important visitors could be accommodated in early January. At present it's all very tentative, but we've asked him to make no bookings after this month. There are the usual staff--boatman, housekeeper, cook. We know something about all of them. One or two of the previous visitors have been important enough to warrant security checks. It's all been done very discreetly. There's a resident physician, Dr. Guy Staveley, and his wife, although I gather she's more off than on the island. Can't stand the boredom apparently. Staveley's a refugee from a London general practice. Apparently he made a wrong diagnosis and a child died, so he's got himself a job where the worst that can happen is someone falling off a cliff, and he can't be blamed for that."

Harkness said, "Only one resident has a criminal conviction, the boatman Jago Tamlyn in 1998 for GBH. I gather there were mitigating circumstances but it must have been a serious attack. He got twelve months. He's been in no trouble since."

Dalgliesh asked, "When did the current visitors arrive?"

"All five in the last week. The writer Nathan Oliver, together with his daughter Miranda and copy-editor Dennis Tremlett, came on Monday. A retired German diplomat, Dr. Raimund Speidel, ex-Ambassador to Beijing, came by private yacht from France on Wednesday, and Dr. Mark Yelland, director of the Hayes-Skolling research laboratory in the Midlands, which has been targeted by the animal-liberation activists, arrived on Thursday. Maycroft will be able to put you in the picture."

Harkness broke in, "Better take the minimum of people, at least until you know what you're dealing with. The smaller the invasion the better."

Dalgliesh said, "It will hardly be an invasion. I'm still awaiting a replacement for Tarrant, but I'll take Inspector Miskin and Sergeant Benton-Smith. We can probably manage without a SOCO or official photographer at this stage, but if it proves to be murder, I'll have to have reinforcements or let the local force take over. I'll need a pathologist. I'll speak to Kynaston if I can reach him. He may be away from his lab on a case."

Harkness said, "That won't be necessary. We're using Edith Glenister. You know her, of course."

"Hasn't she retired?"

Conistone said, "Officially two years ago, but she does work occasionally, mostly on sensitive overseas cases. At sixty-five she's probably had enough of trudging gum-booted through muddy fields with the local CID, examining decomposing bodies in ditches."

Dalgliesh doubted whether this was why Professor Glenister had officially retired. He had never worked with her but he knew her reputation. She was among the most highly regarded of women forensic pathologists, notable for an almost uncanny accuracy in assessing the time of death, for the speed and comprehensiveness of her reports and for the clarity and authority with which she gave evidence in court.

Continues...

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