St Michael’s Mount stands on an island, connected to the Cornish mainland by a slim causeway, a causeway that at high tide and/or bad weather can be completely submerged. Obviously for someone like the Home Secretary, this could be the sort of place to meet with old friends in complete secrecy and safety. Or the ideal place to be stranded with a murderer.

Donna Nightshade leaps at the chance when her nascent detective agency is hired to keep an eye on matters – the Home Secretary has been receiving death threats – and the fact that the possible love of her life, Joe Enys, has been assigned as police protection as well certainly appeals to her. Hopefully that won’t be too much of a distraction when it comes to the two murders…

It’s been a while since I read The Wrecker’s Curse, the first book in this series. Oddly, it seems to have been renamed to The Cornish Curse – I’d guess that the change is to give the series a recurring theme in the title, but the next one is Death Comes To St Ives, as opposed to coming to Cornwall…

As with the first book, this is a bit of an odd bird. There’s a level of unreality in the story with the nature of the Nightshade family making it almost feeling like an exercise in slapstick at times. That isn’t a problem, the book has a distinctive tone, setting it apart from most mystery novels.

I need to make something clear – I really enjoyed this book, but I do have issues with it. There’s a variety of points of view – Donna’s narration, Joe’s POV (but not first person) and general third person – which gives it a slightly uneven tone. The heart of the story is Donna and Joe’s relationship and I felt that perhaps focussing on just them would have strengthened the story.

The plot twists and turns with multiple reveals as the story finishes with a nicely complex plot. However to make that plot work, the sleuths have to overlook something that no armchair sleuth would – there’s a moment when Donna’s uncle says something like “but maybe it happened like this” and I thought thank goodness, someone is about to state the obvious, but he comes out with an even dafter suggestion.

This is even odder when someone pulls out a theory for the second murder out of absolutely nowhere and somehow is correct. By the way, speaking as someone who does do a bit of chemistry teaching, it really isn’t that easy to get hold of the thing or transport it safely…

But all in all, this is something different and different in a good way. I’d read the series in order, and I don’t think it would be everyone, but why not give it a try?