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chalkletters's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
A lighthouse book that’s also a crime novel makes a nice change from all the historical fiction! I first read The Lighthouse while I was living in Cardiff, around the time my fascination with lighthouses actually began. I’d read other novels by P D James, or listened to them as audiobooks, but not in the right order. I actually confused DCI Adam Dalgleish with DS John Rebus for years before rereading this and realising that they’re different characters created by different authors!
Despite this confusion on my part, the characters are the strongest part of The Lighthouse. Reading about Kate Miskin and Adam Dalgleish and Emma Lavenham made me wish I’d read the earlier books in the series so that I could better understand their relationships and history. By contrast, but showing equal skill, some of the one-off characters were so unpleasant that I actually hoped they might end up being murder victims. That said, I must confess that I struggled to keep straight the difference between the doctor, the lawyer and the vicar for the first half of the book. They all sort of melded into one professional English man archetype.
Unfortunately, the actual solving of The Murder in the Lighthouse (as this might be titled had it been written by Agatha Christie) left something to be desired. The SARS outbreak was interesting, especially living in a world where I still put on a mask to go to the shops, but it did take our main detective character out of the action at the crucial moment. When he ended up putting the pieces together from his sick bed, it didn’t read as inspired but rather as simply convenient. I won’t say there weren’t enough clues for a reader to solve this, because I think there probably were, but as someone who reads crime novels for the pleasure of the detective solving the case, this one was underwhelming.
Even aside from the lighthouse, the setting of Combe Island was really interesting, but it didn’t come across terribly consistently. That was probably deliberate, to convey how a murder changes the atmosphere of a place, but it did add to my sense that everything wasn’t quite adding up the way I would have liked.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Murder
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Blood, Medical content, and Rape
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