Location, location, location. Sometimes, one of the things we love about a crime novel is the unique landscape of the story. It isn’t easy making a place your own but the best authors manage to do it, creating characters synonymous with where they work, like Morse and Oxford or even Maigret and Paris. Kate Rhodes has chosen the Isles of Scilly as DI Ben Kitto’s home. This small archipelago off the coast of Cornwall is where he plies his trade. He’s the senior cop for the isles and the sense of surroundings, the history, culture and the people give us a unique sense of place.
Deadman’s Pool is the eighth novel in the DI Kitto series, and here he literally stumble across a murder that is the gateway to a story of even deeper horror. It opens with a moving prologue. Mai is a young woman trapped in a cellar, she has been the prisoner of a man who has held and abused her for years. At the moment she is alone, at his mercy, but she is not the only victim who has been in this situation. The others are gone now all she has is their memory, alongside the fear that comes with not knowing what became of them.
Then we meet Father Michael, a hardy soul who is about to visit St Helen’s, a small uninhabited island. He intends to spend time alone as a pilgrim at the island’s ruined church, which has its own rich history. It was once also a quarantine hospital for sailors suspected of carrying the plague. This macabre story seeps into the atmosphere of the novel.
Kitto decides to take father Michael over to St Helen’s in his boat – all part of the police service in the tight knit island community. While there Ben is walking on the beach with his dog, Shadow. When Shadow starts digging in the sand Ben is surprised as he uncovering a human skull. There are plenty of bodies on the island but this one doesn’t relate to its dark history.
The body turns out to be that of a young Vietnamese woman. There is no obvious reason why she would be in this part of the world, let alone the victim of a terrible crime and a secret burial. Kitto opens an investigation but as the weather closes off the Isles of Scilly from the mainland, he’s forced to rely on his own resources. Then the murderer delivers a package to his house that chills him to the bone. The murderer wants to make a game of the hunt. As the pursuit begins to gather pace we are not sure whether it is Kitto or the murderer who is prey or hunter.
Poet and novelist Rhodes has always been an elegant writer and that remains the case with this new novel. It’s moody and suspenseful and poignant but ultimately hopeful. Like Ann Cleeves, with Shetland and her Jimmy Perez character, the investigation by Kitto explores the darkest secrets within the communities of the isles as he probes for answers, unaware of how close the danger is.
Kitto is a dogged detective, a quiet man with hidden depths, a subtle interrogator, resourceful, which is just as well as the isles are cut off from the mainland. As it is a closed circle mystery, Rhodes has had to be clever in how she hides the killer in plain sight. This type of setup is common in crime fiction, but it’s what happens when the weather closes in. This is a tale that encompasses modern themes of misogyny and human trafficking which grounds it in reality and for that is all the more frightening.
Orenda Books
Print/Kindle/iBook
£6.39
CLF Rating: 4 Stars
