I’ve been wanting to read a Peter Straub book since I found him on Twitter some time ago, I finally found the time and the book altogether and was very pleased with the result.  Here’s the description from the back of the book.

On the tiny Caribbean island of Mill Walk, the rich play tennis, polo and golf, trying to ignore the distasteful, uncomfortable and irritating realities of life.  So when Tom Pasmore, the grandson of a powerful establishment figure, develops a passion for detective work – particularly murder cases – his reputation undergoes a subtle darkening.  And his growing friendship with his strange neighbour, Lamont von Heilitz, the once-famous ‘amateur of crime’, only adds to Mill Walk society opinion that Tom Pasmore is perhaps not entirely reliable.

One murder in particular fascinates Tom – the 1925 killing of Jeanine Thielman at Eagle Lake, a resort patronized only by the cream of the island’s upper crust community.  But when he starts investigating the case, Tom arouses much more than mere disapproval.  On the edge of a sinister web of corruption, deceit and violence, he is in danger of uncovering the darkest secrets of the people who own and run Mill Walk…

I found this book very nicely put together.  The characters were believable and the events very nicely dovetailed together, I didn’t find any inconsistencies.  It was interesting being taken around this tiny little island in the middle of the Caribbean and being shown the two different types of societies dwelling there.  You have the uppercrust who have a lot of money and have no time for anybody without money, those who make sure their daughters marry the right kind of people i.e. those with money and those who have previously been vetted and let into society.  Then you have the lower classes who struggle for money and live in very shabby circumstances, some of whom just happen to have information that would be detrimental to the those in the upper class.  Tom Pasmore’s grandfather is possibly the top of that society and holds many strings, he doesn’t want to see that change.  It was interesting to see how Straub mostly showed this with the residences, the upper class have grand houses in beautiful suburbs while the lower classes have shabby flats which felt as though there were many shadows there.

The bulk of this book was set in the 1960’s, a time of ‘free love’ when things changed a lot.  I didn’t see a lot of evidence of this a couple of small references.  I had to figure out the time setting from when the murder happened and when people were born.  Maybe that had to do with the small island setting where things move much more slowly or maybe I just didn’t see the references.

I did enjoy the book, I will be looking for more by Straub.  I found it challenging to put down and finished it far faster than my time and the 548 pages should have allowed.