Burnt Island ~ Kate Rhodes

Like many readers I first came to Kate Rhodes’ work through her London based novels featuring psychologist, Alice Quentin.  While I enjoyed these in respect of both plot and character development, there was as much pleasure to be gained from her sensitivity to setting.  Already a published poet when Crossbones Yard introduced us to Quentin’s world, Rhodes brought her talents as a wordsmith to bear on the way in which she described the London locations in which the early books in the series were primarily set.  There were times when reading her work was like looking at one of Whistler’s remarkable sketches of the Thames’ waterside.  Latterly, Rhodes has moved her focus to the Scilly Isles, where DI Ben Kitto, newly returned to his home on Bryher after ten years in the Met’s Murder squad, is trying to come to terms with the loss of his partner in undercover work.  Describing the stark beauty of these islands has, if anything, given Rhodes even more scope for her talents and in this, the third book in the series, it is the wild landscape of St Agnes that forms the backdrop for Kitto’s latest investigation.

St Agnes supports a small community, but one which is augmented at certain times of the year both by tourists and visitors from the other islands in the archipelago.  Bonfire night is one of the latter occasions, when islanders from the other Scilly communities come over to St Agnes in order to enjoy both bonfire and fireworks.  However, before the celebrations can begin, the remnants of another fire are discovered and in them the burnt remains of a man.  It transpires that the body is that of Alex Rogan, an incomer  married to one of the island women, who is now pregnant with their first child.  A Professor of Astronomy, Rogan was drawn to the islands because of the purity of their night skies and to St Agnes in particular, where he hoped to set up an observatory that would allow both important observations to be made while encouraging visitors to an island struggling to keep its economy afloat.  At first, despite his Sargent’s reservations, Kitto’s suspicions centre on Jimmy Curwen, a local man suffering from severe psychological damage following a childhood trauma, who is only really happy when surrounded by the island’s wild life.  However, a series of threatening messages, written in the little used Cornish language, suggest that whoever is behind the attack is targeting incomers in an attempt to keep the island as it has always been and fighting against any change.

The threats raise a concern in Kitto’s mind for another recent arrival on the island, Naomi Vine.  Vine, a sculptor of some renown, has not fitted into the St Agnes’ community as well as Rogan.  Her plans to site a series of figures on the westerly beach, reaching out towards the boundary between land and the Atlantic, have been rejected and she is not slow to make her displeasure felt. Whereas the astronomer had worked hard to make friends among the islanders, Vine has stirred up considerable controversy with arguments both for and against.  When the artist goes missing, Kitto can only fear the worst.

While the descriptions of St Agnes bring the island vividly to life, they are not the only strong characteristic of the novel.  The plot is well thought through with just sufficient  indication of where it is going to make the final dénouement completely believable and the characters are persuasively drawn.  Furthermore, Rhodes is allowing the recurring characters to develop in a convincing manner. By the book’s conclusion both DS Nickell and DCI Madron, Kitto’s immediate superior, have developed a more realistic appreciation of the DI’s capabilities and of his working methods.  Kitto himself has not, perhaps, developed quite so much, although there are signs at the end of the novel that he is beginning to see his long term future in the islands and that his family life is going to become more complex.

Having read a really poorly written and badly plotted crime novel over the weekend, with character development so inconsistent with reality as to make me wonder if the book was eventually going to finish with the words and then I woke up and it was all a dream, Rhodes’ Burnt Island was just the corrective I needed.  It reminded me of how good our best crime writers are and that for the majority it is the case that just because they work in genre fiction their narrative talents should not be underestimated.